Hundred-Dollar Rum
by izanyas
Summary: It's hard juggling with studies, a job, a best friend trying to find herself, and an unsatisfied client who wants more than just pizza. Shizaya, Shizuo & Vorona gen.
1. Chapter 1

Story inspired by a comic by federtanz (Tumblr, post/156859519295), Vorona's deign based on art by apetunias (Tumblr, post/153641186578). Written as a birthday present for my friend and beta Laidon.

Warnings: drinking, reckless driving, family death and mourning.

* * *

 **Hundred-Dollar Rum  
Part I**

"Bad," Vorona announced when Shizuo got home.

He didn't have time to close the door behind himself. He could only see half of the living-room from where he was, but it was the half she was occupying—sitting at _his_ desk—and she was hunched over in her chair, nail polish in one hand and the other atop the thick economics book she had borrowed the night before. Only half of her toenails were orange, but more than two thirds of the book had been read.

"Brush's gonna dry," he muttered, leaning down to untie his shoes. "And what do you mean, bad?"

He heard the sound of her body moving and a bottle being screwed shut. Then she said: "Your Modern History grade."

He straightened up too fast and knocked the side of his cranium against the wall. Vorona didn't laugh, though she was looking at him, but he knew better than to think she didn't derive any humor from the situation. "How bad—wait, did you log on to my email again?"

She shrugged. The foot she had perched on the edge of Shizuo's chair came back to the floor, and she pushed herself back to make room for him. She liked that his desk chair had wheels.

Shizuo walked to the desk and leaned over her laptop. Yagiri had sent over everyone's notes for the first assignment of the semester—and, indeed, his was terrible.

"That makes no fucking sense," he said out loud.

He was exhausted. He had helped Celty at the library for hours, stamping new books for her because her boss was a poor excuse for a librarian—and he'd been inhaling coffee and skimming every article he could find for the essay he was already late in handing back. He still had a shift at work afterward.

And he knew he'd done a correct job for the Modern History thing.

"Stop logging onto my account," he barked in Vorona's direction. "I keep having to change my password because of you."

"Better passwords needed."

"F—" Shizuo stopped himself. He didn't like insulting girls, but Vorona really pushed his buttons sometimes. "Damn it. I'm late for work, I'll deal with this later."

Vorona's expression didn't change. It rarely did. She shook the bottle of varnish and opened it again, and then leaned over her own feet and ignored him.

Shizuo's throat tightened a little in guilt, but he didn't have time to stay and ask what was wrong with her. He made his way to the mezzanine over the living-room, where his bed was—the only separate bedroom was inhabited by Vorona. He quickly changed into different clothes and came back down, murmuring his goodbyes, before getting back outside.

The air was warm. It was almost eight in the evening, but this far into spring the sky was bright blue still. The only way to truly feel the night was for the color of light itself against the building façades around, pink and orange. Shizuo ran most of the way to the pizza parlor, with the setting sun at his back. It would've been pleasant if he weren't so tired.

"You're late," Tom said. He was smoking by the entrance, and Shizuo shook his head when he offered him a cigarette. "The boss isn't going to be happy."

"I've never been late before."

"Once is enough," Tom replied, looking at him gently. His words came out alongside blue smoke.

Kaztano wasn't happy. He lectured Shizuo in his loud voice and with his loud accent for almost fifteen minutes, gesturing wildly with his hands, ignoring the patrons around them who kept looking at him in discomfort. Shizuo stood still as a statue and tried not to count the many phone calls Manami was picking up in the pack—the many notes she was putting in for deliveries that Kaztano was giving Shizuo an even later start for.

If this kept going he'd have to lose more time apologizing to each client, and he'd finish at four in the morning instead of two.

Kaztano took a big, wheezing breath. He wiped the edge of his chin of grease from the kitchen and said, "Get to work."

"Sir," Shizuo replied complacently. He wasn't angrier only because he knew this was his fault.

He was reckless on the road for the first hour and a half. He pushed the tiny moped the restaurant owned for all its worth, crossed the entire district ten kilometers above the speed limit to get there within twenty minutes late of his first delivery. The woman who opened the door to him was kind, but he wasn't so lucky with the rest of his clients. The second man he saw had him bow there and apologize for a good ten minutes, and by that time the route Shizuo tried to take to go back to the restaurant was crowded with cars, forcing him to slow down.

He had to repeat to himself that this job was the best paid one around for most of the evening. That the only reason he and Tom and Manami were laboring as they were—Manami as a receptionist and cook, Tom as a waiter, Shizuo as the delivery boy—was because Kaztano was the fairest boss around, and because Kadota himself had gotten him a job there after he left it for construction gigs.

Clients were rarely a perk of his evenings. Shizuo took to them as calmly as he could and wasted all his pent-up energy going as fast as he could from one side of the city to another. The helmet he wore didn't cover his entire face. When he could find a strip of street devoid of traffic he rode fast, and let the wind hit his skin and drown every other sound.

The evening this night dragged by especially slow. For most of it Shizuo kept half of his mind occupied with the essay he had to hand back the following day at midnight. He still hadn't actually written any of it. He could feel his limbs sag with fatigue but he was still planning on staying up most of the night to finish it. Especially since Yagiri had decided to give him an unfair grade, again.

He probably could've wept in joy by the time his last delivery of the night came around.

The sky was grey now. Not black. The lights from the city gave the clouds a milky, blurry shine, the same color as dusty drapes. It made the air feel unbreathable. Shizuo got off the sputtering bike with only one pizza box left and his ass and back aching, and then he came into the shining lobby of the apartment building where his client lived and discovered that the elevator wasn't working.

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," he growled out loud.

From the corner of the room the guardian sent him a sympathetic look. He made himself smile at her despite his irritation, and then he started his ascension to the eighth floor.

Usually he wouldn't have minded the climb. He liked to exercise. But he'd done nothing but miss sleep and miss meals for at least two weeks now, and it was three in the morning already, and he could feel aches in parts of his body that he hadn't known he possessed. His forehead was abuzz with the need to sleep.

There was only one occupied apartment on the eighth floor. Shizuo knocked on the door and tried to read the name on the paper stuck just above the alarm button he didn't want to use. It wasn't a name he had ever seen before. _Nozomu_? he thought, blinking the blur of sleep out of his eyes. _No… maybe Rinya?_

The door opened brusquely. Shizuo didn't jump back only because he didn't think he could've have made a quick move if his life depended on it.

The man standing in front of him looked disheveled. His clothes were rumpled and his shoelaces were untied, and his hair looked to be sticky with something—his face sweaty and his lips trembling.

And then he spoke, and Shizuo got hit in the face with the smell of alcohol, stronger than he had smelled on another person for a very long time. "What do you want?"

His words slurred together, but it sounded like he was trying to seem sharp and composed. With as wasted as he looked, maybe he believed he was.

Whatever. It wasn't any of Shizuo's business. "I'm here with your pizza," he said. He held the box up a little high with both hands.

The man—he was young, probably around Shizuo's age—took a long moment to focus on it. Judging by his frown he was struggling to make sense of the word pizza alone, never mind Shizuo's presence on his doorstep.

"It'll be seventeen hundred yen," Shizuo added hopelessly.

No need to wait for a tip from this guy.

The other made a move, at last. He dragged his hand to the back pocket of his jeans and made a faintly surprised face when it came out empty. "Sorry," he said, after another moment of heavy silence. "I'll just—"

In the second that followed, Shizuo made the hardest decision of his day yet.

He saw the guy turn around too quickly and his foot hit the edge of the step separating the entrance from the rest of his place. It didn't drag itself up to step on it properly. Instead the man's body toppled forward and sideways, in the direction of the polished wood cabinet full of sharp and solid angles.

Shizuo could leave him to it. He doubted this client would be able to see long enough to count the money and pay him anyway. He could just let the man fall and possibly hurt himself and decide not to care, just leave the pizza next to him and go away and get home and spend what was left of his night trying to make up for Yagiri's grudge against the entire student body.

Shizuo always had a distaste for letting himself do the easy thing, however. So he dropped the pizza box and lunged forward to catch his stumbling client around the middle and prevent him from giving himself a concussion.

Apparently he could make a quick move. Only not if his own life depended on it.

The man was very thin. Very light. Shizuo hadn't completely stepped into the entrance, so he was leaning forward quite a bit—it made his forehead level with the other's nape as he held him, and from this close he could smell alcohol in his hair too. Oversweet and heady. He must've spilled a drink on his own head or something.

"Easy," he mumbled, awkward.

The man didn't squirm. When he managed to slightly turn his head to the side it was with a few seconds of delay, as if the situation had taken that long to reach his brain. "What…"

"Just—hang on. I'll get you to your couch."

He squeezed his feet out of his sneakers without letting go of him. Despite his light weight he was leaning heavily on Shizuo, his entire energy dependent on Shizuo's ability to hold him upright. Once he was in his socks, Shizuo dragged the other to his side and lifted one of the guy's arms above his shoulders, sneaking one of his own around his waist. He practically dragged the man further inside the apartment, with zero protest. It was a neat place, which Shizuo wouldn't have expected for someone who looked as out of it as this guy was. If anything he was ready to see a bunch of other college kids passed out everywhere.

But it was empty. Clean and dustless. Except for one sticky-wet spot on the floor where a bottle of rum had been upended—probably when its owner fell—the living-room was sleek and lifeless. Tidy unopened books around the walls and a brand new laptop on the glass desk.

Shizuo laid the man down on his side on the grey couch. The other blinked at him blearily, mouth opening and closing in turn, as if he knew he wanted to speak but couldn't remember how anymore.

Shizuo took a moment to really look at him. He didn't look in _danger_ of anything except accidentally stabbing himself with a corner of the coffee table. As long as he didn't drink anymore there wouldn't be a need to call an ambulance, he thought, uneasy.

He hesitated before asking, "Are you gonna drink more?"

The man's unfocused eyes stayed on him. "No," he replied, at last. "Maybe."

"Right."

He really didn't want to have to call an ambulance on a stranger. Maybe there was someone else he could call, though.

Shizuo retreated to the desk, keeping an eye on its owner. There was a notebook on top of it which he thought might contain addresses and phone numbers, and it did. But he couldn't figure out if any of them belonged to personal relations, a girlfriend or boyfriend or parents or siblings. They were just names, none of which matched the strange one on the door.

When he turned back to look at his client, the man had fallen asleep.

Shizuo stared at the soft, unhappy turn of his mouth for a second longer. He would probably wake up in his own drool and with a raging headache, but it didn't look as if he was going to endanger himself.

Still, he picked up the bottle of rum. A lot of it was still inside. He screwed the lid back on and, after a moment of hesitation, rummaged through the guy's fridge to make sure there was nothing else there that he could drink.

It seemed he had gone straight for the rum and nothing else.

Shizuo put the bottle inside his backpack. He swallowed back his discomfort and opened the last two doors of the apartment—one leading to a bathroom, the other to the bedroom. It was as cold-looking as the rest of the place. There wasn't even a poster up on the walls. He took the comforter off the bed and brought it back to the living-room, laying it on top of the passed out Orihara Rinya. Or Nozomu.

He ripped a page out of the notebook and wrote a quick note on it, adding his phone number and the address of Kaztano's pizzeria, just in case. And then he put it on the coffee table, on top of the cooling pizza, and he left.

He was already an hour and a half late in reporting to Kaztano. He knew the man wouldn't yell at him for making sure someone didn't die of alcohol poisoning or their own stupidity—Kaztano was, according to Kadota, someone who had depended on the goodwill of strangers many times in his life—but he felt guilty for making him stay up so late. Kaztano always said good night to every single one of them before closing the shop by himself.

The night air was cold on his face now. No pink sun to keep it warm.

Kaztano was sitting in front of the shop when he arrived. He had a cigarette in hand and at least three more in the ashtray placed on the stairs next to him. He smiled in Shizuo's direction.

"I'm so sorry," Shizuo said, but Kaztano waved a big hand at him.

"I'll let you take care of the register," was all he said.

Shizuo nodded. He went back inside the empty restaurant and opened the cash register, placing the money out and adding to it everything he got for deliveries. He used part of his tips from the night to pay for Orihara's pizza.

When he came back out, Kaztano handed him a cigarette. "Thank you," Shizuo said.

The first breath of smoke raged inside him, sending sparks into his tired body and easing the stress out of his head.

His eyelids were drooping. He knew if he thought about it too long he would panic at the thought that he had driven in this state, unaware of how dangerous he was to himself and other, so he resolved not to think about it. It would be four soon, and though the city was always awake, he wished he weren't.

Shizuo left Kaztano's company as soon as he politely could. The old man let him go without a word, watching him walk the length the of the street. The traffic only ever let off at this hour of the night. In an hour, people would be driving their cars and bikes getting to work early.

It was five past four in the morning when Shizuo arrived home. He dragged his feet out of his shoes and let himself fall onto the couch in the living-room, and for a long second, he considered taking a sip of the rum he had confiscated from the drunken client earlier. A fleeting noise from above made him look up.

Vorona was leaning over the edge of the mezzanine and looking down at him.

"What are you doing up?" Shizuo asked.

She didn't answer. Her face looked the same kind of sulky as it had before—irritated, negative, malicious. He couldn't tell exactly.

Her toenails still weren't done being painted. The economics book, however, was closed on top of the desk.

"Get out of my room," Shizuo grumbled tiredly. "I have—"

"Father passed away."

Her voice was as matter-of-fact as ever. Shizuo looked at her sharply; there were no traces of tears on her face. No outward sign of grief of discomfort.

"Damn, Vorona," he murmured. "You should've said."

"I just did."

She swung her legs back and forth into the empty space above him. Shizuo caught one of her feet with his hands and squeezed it gently. "D'you wanna talk about it?"

"Negative."

He frowned. Let go of her. "What do you want, then?"

She rested her arms on top of the wooden barrier separating the side of his bed from the imminent fall right after, and she put her chin on top of them, so that the bottom half of her face was hidden from him, but she could still observe him.

"Request zombie movie," she said softly. "And alcoholic drinks."

Shizuo pushed his backpack under the low table with his foot. He picked up the books he had left on the couch before leaving with the goal of sitting down and immediately starting to work, and he stood up, patting the side of her calf as he walked toward his stash of DVDs.

"Sure."

* * *

Vorona was still asleep the following day at two in the afternoon. Shizuo had been awake for an hour and cleaning up the mess they'd made of the kitchen. Despite the thorough brushing he gave his teeth he still had a faint beery taste on his tongue from the off-brand Kriek Vorona always bought him. He didn't even like it as much as he pretended to, but it was the only beer he could drink at all.

He was writing an email to Yagiri. His essay was due in ten hours and still as unwritten as it had been the day before; Shizuo asked her for an extension, again, with a heavy chest and no hope whatsoever. It didn't matter how meticulously polite he was in his message.

She answered five minutes later: _No_.

He heard Vorona move from her bedroom. Wordlessly, he stood up from his seat and put water to boil for tea. Neither of them liked coffee that much.

"Consequences not worth it," Vorona groaned at him when she emerged into the hallway. Her hair was in disarray and her shirt was stained with the cheap mojito she'd drank half of by herself around five in the morning.

"Why do you keep buying this shit anyway?" Shizuo replied.

"Interesting taste. Nothing close to the real deal." She took a seat at the kitchen table and stared at the kettle as if she could make it go faster with the strength of will alone. If left to her own devices she'd probably try to drink boiling water just to get the taste to disappear.

Shizuo snorted unappealingly. "I'll never get your obsession with bad drinks and food. You have money to buy yourself anything you want."

Vorona dragged the leather jacket she'd left on the back of her chair above her head, hiding herself from him and his words.

She had to leave, eventually, to take care of paperwork at the hospital where they kept her father's body. The funeral would be held some time the following week, she had said, drunk out of her mind. Those were the only words he'd managed to get out of her on the topic.

Shizuo drank two cups of sweet tea and sat down at his desk, grimly resolved to write this essay in the nine and a half hours he had left to do it.

He spent most of the day like this, his lower back aching from riding on Kaztano's crappy moped all night and then falling asleep on the couch, drunk out of his mind. From time to time his cellphone buzzed with an incoming text from Celty asking how he was doing or Shinra reminding him he needed to put in some money for the preparations for Kadota's new semester party.

 _I don't want to pay for Karisawa's shit_ , he replied to him.

 _If you don't she'll probably literally rob your place_ , Shinra texted back, quick and unbothered. And then, _I've got a childhood friend coming, so try to make a good impression at least_.

 _I never make a good impression_ , Shizuo said.

 _You know, for someone with instincts as good as yours, you can be really oblivious_.

Shizuo stared at the text for a moment before deciding to ignore it.

Vorona came back around six in the evening, wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket and looking amazingly composed. Shizuo's outline was starting to take shape and his organization was becoming clearer. He could probably actually hope to finish in time, even if the final product would be less than stellar. It wasn't as if Yagiri would mark him fairly anyway. Vorona leaned over his shoulder and huffed quietly, so he batted her away, saying, "No need to gloat," before she could start telling him everything he'd written in mistake.

"Should have worked on schedule," she commented, opening the fridge.

"We can't all just not have a part time job."

Around eight, when Shizuo was almost done with the outline and getting started on writing out the essay proper, he received a phone call. "Heiwajima," he answered curtly.

For a moment all he heard was breathing. He rubbed ink-stained fingers over his eyelids and said, "I'm busy, so—"

 _"I'd like my rum back,"_ said a familiar voice. _"If you don't mind."_

Shizuo leaned back in his chair. "Oh."

 _"'Oh', Indeed."_ The no-longer-inebriated man took a slow breath and asked: _"Would you be free to come over and hand it back tonight? I'd like to avoid going out if possible."_

Orihara didn't sound anything like he had the night previous. His voice was sweet but unfriendly, sharp, haughty. Something you could only consider pleasant in low doses. "You've got a lot of nerve," Shizuo said, irritated despite himself. "I even let you off without paying, you could at least thank me."

Orihara replied instantly: _"How_ terribly _kind of you, to pay for my pizza, which I had to eat cold, by the way. It's not like you took off with a hundred-dollar bottle on your way out."_

Shizuo's eyes flew to the bottle he had set on top of the kitchen counter this morning. The glass—or maybe crystal—reflected the light around and into the amber liquid inside, turning it gold and red.

"Uh," he said. "I didn't know."

 _"I figured. You wouldn't have left your phone number if you did."_

"I didn't drink any of it," he added, suddenly anxious. "No one's touched it. There's not a lot left, though, because you—"

 _"I'm aware,"_ Orihara cut in coldly. _"Are you free tonight?"_

Shizuo looked at the half-finished essay shining off his laptop's screen. "Not before midnight."

 _"Fine by me. Come whenever you can."_ He hung up.

Shizuo didn't move the phone from his ear for a while after that. He looked at the bright, shiny bottle sitting on his counter, and wonder what would've happened if he _had_ drunk from it the night before like he had considered.

Orihara didn't seem like a very forgiving guy. He gave off rich youth vibes. Not the good, selfless kind.

Time went by achingly slow. It had to do with how hard Shizuo found it to focus on so much text for hours on end while keeping his thoughts in line. In the end he did use the coffee machine Vorona owned but never touched. He poured as much sugar into his cup as he could without making himself sick and swallowed the drink as fast and hot as possible. The caffeine helped him through the last hour of his work.

He submitted the essay thirteen minutes before the deadline. He was pretty sure Yagiri had already prepared her failing email for him, and for a good twenty minutes, he sat on his chair, idly watching videos and thinking about her disappointment.

Then he pushed himself upright with trembling arms and grabbed an energy bar in the kitchen. Vorona was sitting on his bed again, legs dangling from the gap between fence and mezzanine floor. She was was filling paperwork.

"I'm going out," Shizuo called.

She looked down. "Nonsense. No work tonight."

"Unsatisfied client," he shrugged.

She didn't reply, but he could read the incredulity on her.

Shizuo took more care with the bottle of rum this time. It was heavier in his hands than it should be, probably confirming that it was made of crystal rather glass. When he moved it the rum splashed around and left tiny golden drops hanging to the sides. He put it in his bag carefully, sandwiching it between books and a scarf, and then he took off for the subway station nearest their apartment.

The ride itself was uneventful. The trains weren't too crowded this late into the night. Most of the other passengers were drunk men in work clothes and women with tension running in their shoulders who avoided eye-contact. It took half an hour for Shizuo to figure out where to go to Orihara's apartment via public transportation rather than his own vehicle and actually get there, but by the time he did, it was just before one.

Once again he climbed eight floors to get there. The guardian in the lobby looked at him with curiosity, probably remembering him as the pizza guy from the night before, but she didn't say anything to him. Shizuo walked up the clean staircase and through the corridor on the eighth floor. It was carpeted in red, and there was a potted plant on a wooden table in the middle, with a mirror on the wall behind. It looked like a hotel hallway.

Orihara took his time to answer after he knocked. Shizuo looked at the alarm button in consideration for a moment but decided against it—he hated when people rang instead of knocking—raising his hand to touch his knuckles to the door again.

Orihara opened right this moment, as if he had been waiting for it.

"Good evening," he said, a fleeting smile on his lips.

"Evening," Shizuo replied.

They stood still for a moment, looking at each other.

Orihara looked way better now. His hair was clean and his skin was a healthier color. The bags under his eyes weren't as pronounced as they had been almost twenty-four hours earlier. He was wearing different clothes too, better-fitter pants and a black, clean, pressed shirt, the collar of which was brushed by soft strands of hair at his nape. He had sharp eyes and thin features and a poise that Shizuo wouldn't have expected of someone he had met for the first time bordering alcoholic coma.

Shizuo had to drag himself back to reality. "Right," he said. "Your bottle."

"If you don't mind," Orihara murmured dryly.

It made anger spark up in him, but Shizuo kept it in check. He slid one arm out of the handle of his backpack and opened it close to his side, taking out the rum.

It was unscratched, but Orihara made a face all the same. "You've been carrying it like _this_?"

"I didn't exactly know I was dragging expensive shit around," Shizuo replied, handing it over. Orihara took it from his hand with a brush of his fingers against Shizuo's knuckles, tingling and warm. "I was tired too. I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't go back to drinking it and kill yourself by accident."

Orihara observed him intently. He wasn't frowning. If anything he looked a little baffled, Shizuo thought. "Are you like this with everyone?"

"Like what?"

Orihara slipped his free hand into his pocket and took something out of it. He unfurled the crumpled piece of paper and read: " _I apologize for intruding. I opened your fridge and displaced a blanket from your room, but I did not steal anything. I'm only taking the bottle away so you don't put yourself in danger. Thank you for ordering from Kaztano Pizza_." When he lifted his head, his eyes were mocking, and Shizuo could feel the burn of blood in his cheeks. "I didn't know pizzerias offered nurse services as well."

"You were fucking _smashed_ ," Shizuo replied in a growl. "Don't tell me you would've preferred to wake up with a concussion."

"I wouldn't have," Orihara said, lids flickering low over his eyes. "If you're this thoughtful with every client, your work must get you _riches_ in tips."

"Says the guy who couldn't even pay."

Orihara waved a hand to the side, like a character in a play. "I'll give you the money I owe you, if that's such an issue. I know times are tough, but I didn't think missing out on fifteen hundred yen would make such an indent in your savings."

"Do you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice?" Shizuo replied. "Because I'm _exhausted_."

He meant it. Orihara had the sort of sweetness to him that only gave cavities on the long run. Yet Orihara smiled at his words, and his face colored with more energy than before, and his eyes never left Shizuo's. And Shizuo found that his cheeks were still warm. "Whatever," he said between his teeth. "Why were you getting drunk off fifteen-thousand-yen rum on your own anyway?"

Orihara's hand fell back at his side, his fingers still clutching the note Shizuo had written the night before. "I was celebrating," he said.

"Celebrating what?"

"Star Wars Day," Orihara said dryly. Then, seeing the way Shizuo's face twisted: "My birthday."

Shizuo swallowed mechanically. His throat felt a sudden tightness, like a diluted version of the kind that he had felt when Vorona had said her dad was dead without shedding a single tear. Mostly discomfort and a little bit of pity.

Orihara himself closed his mouth tightly after that, face pale and frustrated. He plucked a wallet out of the back pocket of his pants and took out a few bills. "There," he said, handing them over. "For the pizza."

There were only fifteen hundred rather than the seventeen Kaztano's tuna pizza was worth, but Shizuo didn't have the heart to tell him his count was wrong. "Thanks," he said in a low voice, pocketing the money.

"Don't worry your sweet head about me," Orihara continued. "I only get this drunk once a year."

"I'm not worried," Shizuo replied tersely.

Orihara smiled. He took another bill out of his wallet and stepped forward, into Shizuo's space and out of his apartment, bare feet quiet on the carpeted floor; Shizuo stood still as he lifted his hand and slid the bill into the breast pocket of Shizuo's jacket.

"See you around, pizza boy," he said. Shizuo looked down at him and at his lips, and Orihara's smile widened, showing sharp, white teeth.

* * *

Shizuo's essay came back with a barely-passing grade. Not enough to make up for the gigantic hole into his average scores that the first assignment was. Yagiri smiled nastily when she gave it back to him, and only the fact that every other student in the room was looking at their copy with a pale face restrained Shizuo's anger.

"I fucking hate her," he told Celty during lunch. She had to at the library for two more hours before she could catch her own break. "God damn it."

Celty typed something on her laptop. She turned the screen toward him when she was done. _It's worrying that this has been going on for years, and no one's fired her yet_ , it read.

"Her father is a big contributor to the pharmacy lab or something," Shizuo muttered. "And she's written a bunch of famous books. Somehow that's enough to overlook the fact that she hasn't passed a single student in ten years."

 _That's what we get for being in this college._

He laughed, despite everything.

He was sitting on a corner of her work desk and helping to put magnets inside newly shipped books. It was brainless work, good enough that they could both do it and still talk at the same time. Outside, spring had bloomed warm and colorful. Rows of flower trees made students sneeze on their way back and forth. Light poured in through the large library windows and dyed every table it touched a rich brown, making the kids sat around them blink tears from their tired eyes.

Celty tapped his elbow lightly. He turned his head to look at her monitor and saw that she had written: _When is the funeral?_

"Monday," he replied softly. It was Friday now. A work day for him, with a working weekend ahead.

 _Do you think Vorona would want us to come?_ Celty asked.

He hesitated, but thought it would be better to tell the truth. "I don't think so." He winced at her. "It's not against you or anything. It's just…"

Vorona didn't have a good relationship with her father when he was alive. The man had been absent, had let her grow up on her own in their home in Russia and then strung her along on his way to Japan without asking for what she wanted. Vorona had lived as isolated in Tokyo as she had before that, until she moved in with Shizuo at the age of nineteen.

And Shizuo wasn't even sure that _he_ would be invited to the funeral. Vorona was a private person who disliked showing her emotions and especially her grief; if anything, he thought she would go alone, and go through every stage of mourning in a meticulous, calculated way, and come out of it the exact way she had come in.

He didn't know if that was a good thing. And he didn't have a right to tell Celty anything more than Vorona chose to.

"Sorry," he said.

Celty squeezed his shoulder comfortingly.

Shizuo's afternoon lecture went by slow and easy. He had plans to swing by Kadota's place after that, so he took off by foot, with more than a half-hour to spare. The walk did him good. Despite the mediocre mark, the relief he had felt since handing in the essay hadn't left. He breathed in deeply, thankful to be free of the allergies plaguing half of his friends, and even as he crawled deeper into Ikebukuro, it was with the smell of flowers in his nostrils.

"Hey," Kadota welcomed him when he arrived, opening his door wide. Behind him there was only Togusa, sitting at the bar and playing app games on his phone.

Kadota's place was the biggest out of everyone they knew. It was also the favorite, because Kadota had done most of the construction work inside by himself, with the help of Simon who worked at the Russian sushi place.

It had been his project since they got into high school together. To buy the biggest place he could find at the lowest price, no matter how decrepit, and to turn it into something livable.

"Karisawa and Yumasaki aren't here?"

"Cosplay group for Karisawa," Togusa replied from the bar. "Who knows what Yumasaki's doing."

"There's a new maid café near your folks' apartment building," Kadota said.

Shizuo and Togusa nodded somberly.

Togusa offered Shizuo a drink, which Shizuo refused. He didn't think there was anything sweet enough here that didn't belong to Karisawa, and he knew better than to dig into her stash. He did accept a can of lukewarm coke, however. Kadota and him took a seat on either side of Togusa, and Kadota asked, without much ado, "How's Vorona?"

"Fine," Shizuo answered. "I think."

"You never know, with this chick," Togusa said between his teeth.

Kadota kicked his shin lightly.

Shizuo shrugged. "She's probably not fine," he said. "But she's holding up. Going through every day. I don't know if it's better than if she let me see that something's wrong, but at least she's doing what she needs to and attending class and everything. She even took care of the groceries yesterday."

Togusa lifted his eyes from the idol game in his hands and grimaced pityingly. "I can't believe you're _living with her_ without dating her." Kadota rolled his eyes ostentatiously, and Togusa added, louder: "What! Vorona is one of the hottest girls we know, _and_ she's not seeing anyone. It's not like Heiwajima isn't into girls."

" _You're_ living with a hot girl," Kadota pointed.

"The weird outweighs the hot in Karisawa's case."

Shizuo tapped the can in his hands with his index, and took a sip of warm soda, and thought idly about the red-haired woman Vorona sometimes brought home and who only left in the morning, looking flushed and satisfied.

"Well," Kadota sighed, "it's good that she's not in bed all day and crying, I guess. Though I wouldn't expect that from her anyway."

"She's pretty solid," Shizuo said with a smile.

Kadota bowed his head in serious acquiescence. When he lifted it, there was humor on his face. "Now," he continued. "Erika said you owe us a little something for the party."

Shizuo groaned.

* * *

Later, at work, when Shizuo was back from his third round of deliveries and stacking the following—and last—ones onto the back of the moped, Manami stopped him with a curt call of his name.

"What is it?" he asked.

She looked unhappy, but it wasn't a very good indicator of her mood. She always looked unhappy. "This guy asked to be your last delivery," she said, giving him a slip of paper. "Orihara Izaya."

Shizuo felt a rush through his limb and into his hands. It tingled in his fingers when he took the paper. "Oh."

She squinted at him in suspicion and then turned on her heels and walked back into the restaurant. Shizuo saw Tom wave at him from inside, two plates on one hand and walking between tables. He waved back half-heartedly.

Time seemed to speed up on this last round. The city was a blur around his head, white lines drawn onto endless black, as if someone had pressed fast forward onto the life around him. He turned around Ikebukuro three times, slid between cars on the road and avoided running on stray cats in the alleys. He didn't remember the faces of the people who paid and tipped him. Before he knew it he was standing in the lobby of Orihara's apartment building, and the woman at the counter was smiling with familiarity and whispering, "Good evening."

The elevator had been fixed. Shizuo took the stairs anyway, despite the cooling pizza in his hand and the unnecessary effort of climbing all those floors. He stepped into the red-carpeted hallway and walked past the plant and table and mirror and he knocked on Orihara's door. Orihara himself opened a few seconds later, looking tired but clean and alert, and his smile this time was a lot less sweet.

It was also a lot of more honest.

"Pizza boy," he greeted him. His eyes trailed down, stopping by Shizuo's mouth and then chest before landing on the box in his hands. "And my order."

"Shouldn't it be the other way around?" Shizuo asked before he could stop himself.

And Orihara smiled wide and gleeful, taking the box from his hands, slipping not enough money into the front pocket of Shizuo's jacket again. His fingers lingered for a second too much.

The encounter left Shizuo shaken until he managed to fall asleep, hours later, fitful and restless.

Orihara pulled the same thing the following day. He told Manami to write him down as Shizuo's last delivery of the night, and Manami did with thin lips and an irritated face. The conversation they had didn't last more than five minutes, like the times before.

"I have a name," he told Orihara after the man called him _pizza boy_ again. "If you're going to keep bothering me during my work time you might as well start using it."

"Heiwajima Shizuo, right?" Orihara said immediately.

Shizuo tensed. "I never introduced myself to you."

"No, but the lovely receptionist at your workplace tells me everything when I ask nicely enough." Orihara slid him the money, more this time—almost enough to pay for the full pizza. "She also said you live with your girlfriend, whom she called a 'literal Russian babe'."

"She's not my girlfriend," Shizuo replied tiredly.

Orihara smiled at him darkly. "Good."

On Sunday Shizuo thought about taking the day off. Vorona didn't show any change in her behavior, but she spent most of the day confined in her room and using every bit of their shared Wi-Fi to find which place sold appropriate black dresses for a funeral and was open on a Sunday at all. Shizuo didn't comment on it. He wanted to stay and insist that she talk, because he feared that this might be the one time he should; but Vorona had been handling things fine. She hadn't denied him the right to come to the funeral yet. When he had seen her at noon she had been on the phone, presumably with Sharaku, and she hadn't seemed any different than usual.

He left her some tea before he left, prepared as black as she liked it.

Orihara had his door open this time. He was sitting on the step leading to the inside of his apartment proper, with his bare feet next to his shoes and slippers.

"Is the tuna pizza really that good?" Shizuo asked warily. "You haven't ordered anything else."

Orihara pushed himself to his feet. "It seems I can't get enough of it," he replied, giving Shizuo a once-over and pushing the money toward him. Seventeen hundred yen.

Shizuo's face burned, and he wanted to reply with something—he didn't know if he wanted to encourage or discourage the other—but all Orihara did was step back, taking the box from Shizuo's hands, and slam the door close between them.

"Damn it," Shizuo snapped. "At least _tip me_ , you asshole!"

There was no answer from inside the apartment. Shizuo stood there for a minute longer, trying to reign in the irritation and embarrassment making his blood boil through his every vein. In the end he stomped away after kicking the wall—and he noticed with a mix of shame and satisfaction that his shoe had left a stain behind, grey on red.

Vorona was awake when he got home. She was sitting on the couch rather than on any of his possessions, which was rarely. The mug full of tea that he had left her was sitting, empty, on the coffee table.

"Hey," he said.

She lifted her head from the magazine she had spread over her crossed legs. That was when he noticed.

She had cut her hair while he was out. It was shorter, completely shaven on one side even, while on the other, longer bangs framed her face, without the ability to hide it like it always had before.

He stared at her in silence for a while. She didn't seem too upset at him for it, and she didn't move at all until he was done taking in the change. Ultimately, all he did was sit on the couch next to her and say, "Looks good."

"Affirmative."

"You can just say yes, you know."

She hit him with the magazine, very lightly. It made him smile through his worries and his chest tighten with the knowledge that this wasn't like her. Vorona was never that playful.

So he decided to do what he had refrained from doing this entire time, and he asked: "Are you alright?"

She didn't immediately answer. Rather, she watched the muted TV in front of her with empty eyes, and with her hands, she took something wrapped in plastic that had been sitting on the other side of her body and gave it to him.

It was a dress, from what he could see. Brand new, unworn, cleanly folded. She probably hadn't even tried it on before buying it.

"I'm sure you'll look good in it," he offered, because he didn't know what else to say. Vorona never wore dresses, and he never questioned it, but he knew it would be another awkward thing for her. Another detail to work through on her own.

She looked at him again. "Extending invitation," she said in a small voice. "To the funeral. Tomorrow."

Shizuo's heart pulsed in his throat. He blinked the blur out of his eyes. "Yes," he replied. "Of course I'll be there."

She nodded her assent, and turned back to the silent TV. He couldn't see any trace of sleeplessness or anxiety on her. She was as solid a presence as she had ever been, unreadable but not emotionless, someone he cared about and found comfort around. Shizuo didn't think he had ever met someone as tough as she was.

And yet, when she lifted a hand to touch the shaved side of her scalp, her painted fingers were trembling.


	2. Chapter 2

Many thanks to zarinthel on Tumblr for the beta.

Warnings: implied manipulation, implied (internalized) homophobia, self-harm.

* * *

 **Hundred-Dollar Rum  
** **Part II**

It wasn't until the funeral that Shizuo realized he had never seen Vorona's father in person. He hadn't even known the man's name until she handed him the invitation proper. It was written in Russian and Japanese both, for the colleagues and friends of Drakon's that would be there; and it had a picture of a severe-looking man with an emaciated face on it that Shizuo couldn't find Vorona's features in, no matter how hard he tried.

She must have taken after her mother. Vorona had never talked about her. Shizuo had never asked.

He had known her father was very sick. For almost as long as he been her friend, she had mentioned that he was working from his hospital room. Shizuo knew, intellectually, that for Vorona the past two years had been spent in wait of Drakon passing away. She visited him twice a month like clockwork, never offering for Shizuo to come with her and meet him. Maybe she thought Drakon would assume like everyone did that they were together.

Vorona's sexuality had been an open secret between them both since the start. The fact that Shizuo never asked her to disclose it and never disclosed his own in return was probably, he thought, part of the reason why she offered to move in with him in the first place. Now two years later she still hadn't said the word, and he hadn't, either. It didn't matter.

Among the other people gathered at the crematorium, Shizuo saw Simon and Denis, the two Russians working at the sushi place that the Kadota household worshipped. Sharaku was there as well, although very isolated, almost hidden—and she wasn't wearing a dress despite the looks she attracted. She wore a fitted black suit instead. Vorona nodded in her direction but didn't approach her. She left to greet every guest, most of them in Russian, and Shizuo went to the back of the room where Sharaku stood shrouded in shadow.

"Hi," she said to him pleasantly.

"I'm glad she invited you," Shizuo replied.

It made her smile, sharp as always. "I'm glad she invited _you_ , Heiwajima. She wasn't sure how to do it, you know."

He would've liked to question her on those words, but a man at the front requested everyone's silence for the start of service.

Shizuo looked at Vorona's half-shaven head two rows of chairs ahead. Her back looked like the only solid thing in the room.

It wasn't a long thing. Shizuo wasn't a religious person, and he knew Vorona's family hadn't been either; there was no priest or pastor, just city officials and members of Vorona's dad's company, thanking him posthumously for his work, commenting on his bravery in the face of illness. Vorona herself spoke at one point, but it was all in Russian—neither Shizuo nor Sharaku understood a word of it. It made the tiny old lady beside them weep more fervently, though.

All in all, it took maybe an hour. By that time they had all put a flower into the glass encasing the coffin and watched as it dropped below to the crematorium—and they stepped outside of the building and blinked tiredly at the expense of sunlit street ahead.

Sharaku patted Shizuo's elbow briefly. "Come on," she said, nodding toward the side of the building where a flower shop stood, sinister.

He followed her to the edge of it and leaned against the wall next to her. In the distance he could see Vorona talking to the guests, standing next to the person who had signed her half of the bail on their apartment—an old, portly man named Lingerin.

Shizuo recoiled a little when he saw her kiss some of the guests on both cheeks before sending them away.

"She's been incredibly tough about the whole thing," Sharaku murmured behind him.

He turned his head to look at her. "I know. I never even saw her cry."

"Well," Sharaku sighed, taking a pack of gum out of her suit pocket, "he wasn't exactly Father of the Year. You know."

He did.

Sharaku popped one piece of gum into her mouth and raised the pack toward him in offering, but he shook his head, instead taking his cigarettes out and lighting one as she shrugged. The first breath of smoke didn't go down well. Vorona was taking a long time to say good bye, despite the small number of guests, and he knew that after that they would all meet for a meal. She hadn't invited him for it.

When she finally came back toward them, Lingerin was hovering near the entrance of the crematorium, impassable.

Vorona looked a sort of ethereal with the sun at her back. Black was a good color on her, but the dress made her look like a different person altogether; when she stopped in front of Shizuo he had to take a moment before he could react, and she used it to slip a hand into his pocket and drag his cigarettes out.

She lit one in front of his face. It wasn't until she breathed the smoke at him that he said, "What the shit, Vorona?"

Her lips stretched into a smile, whitening the outline of the scar crossing them diagonally, and Sharaku laughed warmly.

"She pickpockets you all the time," she commented.

Shizuo groaned. "You better pay me back for that."

"Awaited your noticing," Vorona muttered. Then she closed her eyes and smoked again, her face looking as close to bliss as it ever had.

Sharaku looked like she wanted to hold her. Her arms were crossed tightly in front of her, fingers digging into her elbows. From the entrance, the man named Lingerin was observing them, his gaze almost a physical weight onto Vorona's nape. It made confused, angry disgust spread through Shizuo's veins for reasons he couldn't completely explain, and judging by the way Sharaku stared at Lingerin, she felt the same way.

"I'm guessing he wasn't too happy about your haircut," she said tightly.

Vorona flicked the ashes of her stolen cigarette onto the pavement, and she replied, "Fuck him."

Sharaku's smile after that was the softest Shizuo had ever witnessed on her.

* * *

"Yesterday's pizza was given to me by a very rude man," Orihara said the following day. Like the last time Shizuo had seen him, he was waiting with his door open, sitting on the step leading into his living-room, elbow on his knee and chin in his palm.

"I took a day off," Shizuo replied. "And stop lying, I know Tom-sam is good to clients."

Orihara caught the pizza box Shizuo near-accidentally let fall on him with dexterity. His smile was as dark as it was inviting, but though he looked like he was having fun, there were dark circles under his eyes.

Before he could help it, Shizuo asked: "Bad day?"

Orihara looked at him silently for a second. In the end he chuckled instead of answering, pushing himself upright with his free hand and then deftly opening his wallet and handing Shizuo the money he owed, held lightly between his index and middle finger. Shizuo took it and tried to ignore the way his skin shivered at the contact.

"I should really think about tipping you," Orihara said, cutting Shizuo's growing blush short.

"You asshole," he growled. "You should've been tipping me from the beginning."

"I'm not sure you deserve it, though."

Shizuo pointed behind Orihara's head and to the inside of his home, where he had made sure Orihara didn't accidentally die no more than a week ago. "I've been _nothing_ but considerate and helpful to you since we met."

"And yet this is the second time you insult me," Orihara replied, delight on his lips. "I'm not really sure you understand this whole client is king thing."

"The day I treat you like a king is the day I fucking—"

Orihara put his fingers against Shizuo's lips, and Shizuo's words died with a gasp. Eyes wide and heart caught in his throat.

"There," Orihara murmured. "Before you make another terrible work-related mistake."

They stared at each other without moving. Despite his efforts, Shizuo breathed out lightly, damply, against Orihara's fingers and his own burning lips. He could feel the blood in his face and he could _see_ the blood in Orihara's, flushing it a warmer pink than he had seen so far, making the air coming out of the other's open mouth tremble.

Orihara took back his hand, very slowly. "To answer your question," he said in a breezy voice. Shozuo blinked, snapping himself back to reality; Orihara gave him a mocking smile, but his cheeks were still red. "I've had a terrible couple of days. Thank you for asking."

And then he stepped back and onto the step without ever looking away from Shizuo's eyes, and he closed the door between them.

Shizuo was so torn between frustration and a helpless sort of longing on the way back that he didn't notice the time. His face was numb from the cold night when he got off the moped in front of the restaurant, his steps awkward from the ride. He looked at the door, and only the fact that Kaztano wasn't waiting for him outside with the smell of tobacco clinging to his skin made him notice that the lights inside were still on.

"You're early," Tom declared with surprise when he stepped in. All the clients were gone from the restaurant, and Tom himself had his bowtie hanging around his neck loosely. He was busy cleaning the dining room. Shizuo heard the loud sounds the washing basin's faucet made from the kitchen—they weren't loud enough to cover Kaztano's singing.

"Not too many deliveries," Shizuo said. "Need a hand?"

Tom waved the broom he was holding with a lopsided smile. He laughed when Shizuo took it with a sigh, and then stretched his arm above his head until his back cracked audibly.

"That's disgusting," Shizuo observed.

Tom put a cigarette between his lips. "I don't comment when you show up with a busted face, so don't you talk trash about my fucked-up back," he said. "Now work, kouhai."

"I quit the boxing club a year ago, stop using it as an argument."

"Yeah, yeah." Tom lit the cigarette and sat on the edge of a clean table, running a hand through the locks of his hair.

Kaztano never minded them smoking inside the restaurant as long as the clients were gone and the windows were open. Shizuo opened one with his free hand and then took to mopping the parts of the floor Tom hadn't gone through yet. They made up most of the room. At least all the tables were cleared and clean already.

Manami crossed the dining room on her way out, probably because Kaztano ordered her to leave the rest of the dishes to him. She didn't stay to chat with them—she never did. She did stop for a second to stare at Shizuo, however, with a complicated expression on her face that made shivers crawl up his back as he remembered Orihara's words. _The lovely receptionist at your workplace tells me everything when I ask nicely enough_.

But Manami didn't speak to him. She huffed a little haughtily, tightened her grip on the pink dog-eared backpack she wore, and left the restaurant with a soft ring of the entrance bell.

"Weird girl," Shizuo said. "I don't think she'll ever like us."

He looked at Tom, but Tom didn't look back. He was staring in Manami's wake with distant eyes. "This guy," he said.

"What?"

Tom took a deep inhale of his cigarette. The end of it glowed bright and orange, dragging backward on the paper in a way that would have left Shizuo coughing; Tom took in the smoke without even a wince. When he spoke again his words carried it out like wind. "The one who keeps asking to be your last delivery. Orihara Izaya."

Shizuo's shoulders stiffened. "What about him?"

He realized too late how defensive he sounded. His mouth closed too quickly, his teeth hitting together and making the sides of his face ache with them.

Tom's eyes slid back to him. His face was relaxed—Shizuo didn't think he had ever seen so much as a frown on him—but his eyes weren't wearing any sort of humor in them, the way they usually did. "He didn't seem to like me very much yesterday."

"Did he do something—"

"Hey," Tom cut in, smiling once more. "Relax. I'm not scared of any client, and he didn't even do anything. We said hello, he tipped me, we said goodbye." He took another puff of his cigarette, eyes fixed onto Shizuo's face. "He was just a bit cold, s'all."

Shizuo's hand loosened around the broom. "At least he tipped you," he grumbled.

"That's just my unending charm at work. Don't beat yourself up about it."

Shizuo felt his lips stretch into a smile against his will.

"Still." Tom leaned backward over the table he was sitting on, to reach the ashtray on the one behind it. He dragged it back onto his lap and tapped the end of his cigarette with his index to dust off the ashes. "Is he bothering you?"

Shizuo almost turned his back to him and started mopping the floor again, saying, _Who, Orihara? No way_. He almost left the question hang unanswered like that, and only the twitch of actual concern on Tom's face made him stay put and shake his head. "No. It's fine."

Orihara did bother him, but not in the way Tom thought. Only in the way of intruding into Shizuo's mind at random during the day and with more precise purpose during the night; thin fingers brushing his, or the shameless way he had of showing his attraction, eyes painted red by the light of the hallway, mouth open as if ready to bite. As if the thought of endangering himself never even entered his mind—or as if he _thrived_ on it. Soft hair and soft lips and a smile like a brick wall.

Shizuo swallowed. "He's not bothering me," he continued, heart beating fast. "He's just—he's something."

Tom made a noise of quiet assent. He took another drag of smoke and crushed the stub into the glass ashtray, before jumping back on his feet. His hands ran down his apron, chasing imaginary cinders. "All right, then," he said. His eyes were dark, and his mouth upturned.

"My boys!" Kaztano's voice came as he walked out of the kitchen, booming, startling the both of them. "It's time for you to go."

"We're not done cleaning—"

"Shush," Kaztano cut, and Tom shut his mouth, bewildered. "We've been graced with the luck of closing early. I won't have college kids waste this immense opportunity to engage in something they seldom do— _sleep_."

"You're one to talk, boss," Shizuo replied with a grin.

Kaztano shook his fist in his direction. "Only Kadota gets to call me this. Now, out with the both of you."

Tom raised his hands in the air with a defeated expression on his face, and Shizuo followed him outside with a laugh lodged in his throat. He lit his own cigarette on the way and closed his eyes to the feeling of soft, cool wind on his face, so different from the whiplash of riding the moped.

Tom was looking at him with a smile when he opened them again. "So," he said. "Feel like doing what signor Kaztano ordered and getting a full five hours of sleep?"

"Maybe," Shizuo replied. "Did you have something else in mind?"

Tom's hand came up to rub his nape. "Well. I was thinking that maybe we could get a drink somewhere." The light in his eyes had shifted with the night light to something open and suggestive, and when he smiled, it was half-hopeless and half-hopeful. "You know."

Shizuo's lips felt numb.

Instead of finding words to reply, his mind replayed for him the many times Karisawa had asked about _Tanaka Tom_ with infuriating suggestion in her eyes, ever since his first day of work here.

"You," he got out, unhelpfully.

And then he coughed from the smoke still caught in his mouth and had to lean against the lamppost beside him so he could hit his own chest with his closed fist and force the air out of his lungs.

Tom laughed at him as he hacked like this for about a minute. It was a nervous sort of chuckle, something that Shizuo noticed despite his burning face and painful breaths—and still it sounded open and warm the way no one else he knew did. When he straightened up again it was with a wheeze, and he knew his face was as red as Kaztano Pizza's devanture. "Sorry," he muttered. "I wasn't expecting…"

Tom waved a hand in his direction. "It's cool, man. Don't sweat it." He didn't sound surprised, just disappointed, and Shizuo couldn't help the regret swelling in him from the sound of it. "Not into dudes, then?" Tom asked.

"No! I mean, yes, I—shit." Shizuo rubbed a shaky hand over his face, took a deep breath, and said: "I am. Into dudes."

"Oh," Tom replied.

Shizuo's nape was damp with sweat, now. A familiar sort of queasy discomfort made its way through his limbs and through his guts; and though he told himself again and again that _Tom_ wasn't going to judge him for it after what he himself had offered, he couldn't help but want to hide.

He couldn't help feeling like his insides were being wrung dry.

He had no idea whether Tom noticed it—he was too busy shooting side-glances at the entrance of the restaurant and hoping against hope that not a word that they had said had reached Kaztano's ears. In any case, Tom sighed loud and resigned, and said, smiling: "At least I didn't spend all this time pining after a straight guy, then."

"Yeah," Shizuo mumbled. "Um. I'm sorry if I acted like—"

"Shizuo," Tom cut in gently. "I said don't sweat it. You didn't do anything wrong."

Shizuo bit his bottom lip. His hands were closing and opening again, sweaty and useless, nails digging into his palms.

Tom let out a deep breath and walked toward him, one hand in his pocket and the other stretching forward to grasp Shizuo's shoulder kindly. "I thought I'd try, but that's all," he explained. "You don't need to feel bad."

"It's fucked up that you're comforting me right now," Shizuo replied lowly.

Tom laughed, bashful. "You look like you're ready to pass out. And I thought I might be too late anyway, so I'm not too heartbroken about it."

"What do you mean?"

He patted Shizuo's shoulder briefly before releasing him and stepping back. "Nothing," he lied.

He took another cigarette out of his pack after that and leaned against the flickering street lamp that they all used to tie the moped to. For a while he stayed silent as Shizuo watched, letting tendrils of yellow smoke escape his lungs.

"What about you, though," Tom asked in the silence. "Got anyone in mind?"

And Shizuo was about to reply, _No_ , like he had to the same question for years now. But before he could he saw the red hallway, with a fleck of green from a forlorn potted plant; and he recalled Orihara thanking him with a desperate sort of sincerity for showing the most basic of respect, cold fingers trailing down and away from Shizuo's mouth with a shiver.

"I don't know," he replied. His throat felt tight again.

"Mmh."

They both heard the sound of chairs scraping the floor from inside the restaurant. Kaztano was about to finish cleaning the dining room.

Tom let his cigarette drop and crushed it with the sole of his shoe. "Right. Five hours of sleep. It's more than I've had in two weeks, I think."

"I've only had more because me and my roommate drank ourselves into oblivion," Shizuo said, and the thought brought a smile to his lips.

Tom groaned. "Don't tempt me, I have a thesis deadline soon."

They started walking toward the main streets where they would part ways. Shizuo tried not to focus too hard on Tom's proximity and on how he must feel about it; he felt more awake than he had since the semester had started, as if every beat of his heart was a beat of the city around, pulsing in the air and against the concrete, making the lights around flicker. The silence between them wasn't uncomfortable so much as pensive. Heavy. When they reached the tiny green park behind campus, Tom stopped.

Shizuo did as well, with a second of hesitation.

The other looked at him for a moment and said, "Don't set your standards too low, Shizuo."

He left before Shizuo could decide on a way to answer.

* * *

Shizuo sat through his morning lecture the next day with his mind in a daze. Everywhere he looked he thought he saw others looking, and the irritation that flowered in him every time was making it hard to focus. Yagiri drawled on at the front of the room, facing a good three empty rows, because no one wanted to be anywhere close to her; Shizuo himself was at the very back, sandwiched between Kamichika and a guy whose name he didn't know. Neither of them was taking notes.

His phone buzzed not even a half-hour in. Shizuo stared at it uncomprehendingly—no one he knew ever texted him this early, not even Celty, who always waited before the time his classes let off to contact him, just in case.

Celty had a deep-set fear of bothering others, he knew.

Shizuo unlocked his screen. The number wasn't one he knew, but his entire back knotted up at the message itself, and when he read it over, his own narration turned to Orihara's liquor-like voice in his ears.

 _You know, for someone who insists that I call him by name, I haven't ever heard you say mine._

It took him a moment to parse the fact that Orihara knew his number; for a wild second he imagined that maybe the other's tendency to obsess ran as far as to research this sort of information—but then he remembered that he had given it himself, that very first night. That Orihara had already called him once. Some of the tension in him eased.

He typed back, _I can't fucking read your name._

 _I've told Manami-chan to tell it to you_ , Orihara replied, a few seconds later. _Multiple times_.

Shizuo grit his teeth together. His grabbed his phone with both hands instead of one and gave up on the notes spread in front of him. He hadn't managed to focus on them anyway—he'd just ask someone else for them. But before he could find a way to sound appropriately pissed off, Orihara sent a third text that simply read: _Izaya_.

He remembered Manami saying that to him. Tom, even. It sounded to strange that he hadn't even considered for a second that it might be Orihara's actual first name.

 _There's no way that's a real name_ , he sent.

 _This is one thing I can't be blamed for_ , Orihara—Izaya—retorted. _Please limit your distaste of me to things I'm responsible for. There are many_.

He sounded so arrogant, even in texting. As if he felt entitled to everyone and everything around him. The fact that self-loathing clung to his skin every time they met didn't abate the anger this brought inside Shizuo—the fact that he had spent the night turning in his bed and thinking alternately of Tom's proposal and Orihara's fingers on his lips hadn't abated it either.

 _I'm in class_ , he started writing, _just order another pizza if you wanna talk so bad_ —

"Heiwajima," Yagiri's voice said loudly.

Shizuo's hands squeezed around his phone, and the screen cracked in the middle with a very small sound. He raised his head.

"Am I bothering you?" she asked.

"No," he replied carefully. Every head in the room had turned to look at him.

She smiled, then, a cold, distorted excuse for humor. Her voice was glacial. "Thank God for that, then. Seeing as you're bothering me, however, please see yourself out of my class—and don't think of ever getting back in."

There was ice in Shizuo's belly. "I—"

She slammed a hand down onto her desk, making most people in the room jump and Shizuo's heart lodge itself just below his throat, beating furiously. " _Get out_."

Kamichika slowly slid the phone _she_ had been texting with for the entire class into her pocket. The three students in the row just in front of Shizuo stopped watching the video they had been stuck on for at least ten minutes. From the corner of his eye, Shizuo saw another close the sketchbook he was doodling in, and many more phones disappear from their respective owners' hands.

The anger exploded inside him, hot through his veins, bleeding white into his vision. " _Fine_ ," he growled, loud and uncaring. He stood up, letting the folding wooden chair under him snap back up with a loud _clang_ , and he shoved his notes back into his bag. He almost kicked the guy next to him in the shins to indicate that he wanted to leave, but he didn't need to—the other stood up quickly to make room for him to pass, and Shizuo did so without bothering to halt his steps into something more polite.

"Good luck finding a new college," Yagiri said, face entirely white except for bright spot of gleeful red on her cheeks, "since I'm never passing you, you drive-less _brat_ —"

"Shut the _fuck_ up," Shizuo roared in her direction.

He heard gasps and nervous chuckles from the others in the room, but they came to him as if lost in the distance, lost in the fog. The only thing he could hear and see was Yagiri.

"Who the fuck wants your shitty excuse for a teaching anyway?" He punched down on the empty desk at the end of the row—the wood cracked, and so did his skin, blood spilling wet and warm over his knuckles. He couldn't even feel the pain. "I'm walking myself out, asshole."

Yagiri's beautiful face twisted itself into monstrous anger. No sign of restraint or intelligence anymore—just pure, unadulterated, vicious resentment, and with a bright flash of understanding, Shizuo knew that it must look how she felt and how she was under all the layers of poised arrogance she exuded. Her blood itself must taste bitter and almond-like on her tongue.

He turned his back to her as she opened her mouth and kicked the door open. The joints moaned once as he went out and once as it closed behind him, and the last he heard of Yagiri's cyanide was incoherent white noise.

* * *

Shizuo hadn't set foot into the gym for almost a year. His feet took him there by automatism, and he didn't even change his clothes before wrapping his hands up—not bothering to take care of the crusting blood on his right knuckles or the splinters that must be there—and trying his best to punch open one of the sandbags scattered around the wide room.

His shoulders started aching within the first minutes, but he didn't stop. The anger was alive in him and breathing fire into his lungs instead of air, melted iron into his veins instead of blood. His back ached, but he didn't stop. He worked himself into a full-body sweat and didn't stop. The gym was always emptier on Wednesdays because no classes happened on that day, and this morning it was deserted except for Rokujou's presence by the locker rooms' doors. Shizuo never stopped despite the wide-eyed looks he was sending him.

The only reason he did stop was because he felt something touch his shoulder, over his sweat-damp clothes, and when he breathed in he smelled Vorona's shampoo. The one that always cluttered their entire apartment every time she took a shower. Lilacs.

So Shizuo lowered his bruised hands and winced at the pain running up his arms; and he turned around and looked directly into Vorona's serious eyes. She had changed her clothes into something more appropriate for boxing.

"Hey," he breathed. He was panting, he realized.

She threw him a pair of gloves wordlessly, and he caught them without thinking about it. Then she slid her own fingers into the ones dangling from her wrists, and she nodded toward the ring behind them, saying, "Requesting fight."

Shizuo ran the back of a trembling hand under his nose. "All right."

He heard Rokujou say, _Yes_ , loudly from the back of the room. Vorona didn't show any acknowledgement for it, so he didn't either, and he followed her onto the ring, fixing the gloves around his hands as he did.

Vorona stretched for a few minutes, the way he should have done before. He watched her as he caught his breath, the way she had pinned back her hair and the lean muscles over her arms and stomach, and he smiled.

When she approached him, she was smiling too, the scar over her lips whiter than ever.

He lost track of time. He was rusty, his moves slow and hesitant, but Vorona wasn't; she trained every day religiously, and he felt it in every punch she landed on him that would leave a bruise for him to wince over later. She had lost none of the reflexes she acquired when they fought on the regular. She avoided his right hand despite its injury and she attacked him from the left, relentless, implacable. He found himself grinning through it all despite himself and despite the one time she managed to hit his face. She slowed her pace after that to give him a chance, and though he tried to take advantage of it—though he felt the air sizzle around his fists—it was to no avail.

Rokujou was the one to call it off, and it wasn't because they wanted to. He had his phone in his hand to record everything and five other people behind him waiting for their turn to spar.

"Man," he said, eyes fixed onto his screen with wonder. "You _have_ to come back."

"Shut up," Shizuo replied.

He was drenched in sweat, his jeans clinging to his legs disgustingly. Vorona's face was red and her skin shining too, even before she used the bottle one of the guys waiting gave her to splash water on it. She didn't say a word to anyone—she climbed off the ring and made a beeline for the girls' locker room without looking back.

Shizuo jumped off as well and followed in her footsteps.

He hadn't brought a change of clothing. Vorona gestured for him to wait outside the rooms and went in her own, coming back a second later with a plastic bag.

"Thank you," he said, after staring at her a second too long.

She frowned and replied, "I will wait."

He took a long time in the shower. His anger had become a languid sort of heat inside him, relaxed from the adrenaline of fighting Vorona again after so long, sated and warm. Shizuo let cold water wash over him and felt no shiver.

He changed into the sweatpants and T-shirt Vorona had brought over—realizing that those were probably clothes she had meant for him to wear _while_ they fought. The embarrassment made laughter crawl out of him, and he let it out, ignoring the one other guy in the room who was looking at him as if he were a curious animal.

As promised, Vorona was waiting for him outside the gym. She was back into her own clothes—black cargo pants and a white tank top and sunglasses over her eyes—and as soon as he stepped out, she handed him her phone.

There was a text on the screen. It was from Kamichika Rio, and in it he read a report of what had happened during their one common lecture.

"Right," Shizuo said. He gave Vorona her phone back and grabbed the water bottle peeking out of her bag. He drank about half of it in one go, and even after that, his throat felt parched.

Vorona sat down on the pavement, leaning her back against the wall of the building behind her. "Plans?" she asked.

He crouched next to her carefully. His back and shoulders seemed to scream with pain, and he tried very hard not to think of how that would feel later when he made his deliveries.

"I don't know," he admitted.

He half-expected her to look disapproving. But all she did was nod and turn her head to look forward.

Shizuo studied her profile in silence. When he eyes trailed over the scar on her mouth, he said, "I still feel bad for that."

She didn't ask him what he meant; her fingers flew up to touch her lips and trace over the thin white line there. "No fault but mine," she replied.

"I should've been more careful. I hit you way too hard—"

She snorted loudly, interrupting him. "You've already apologized. It happens."

Shizuo fell silent. Accidentally breaking Vorona's front teeth during a spar had been the reason he quit boxing in the first place, and she was aware of it. He still remembered in stark detail the face she had made, dazed from the pain, touching the blood pouring out of her mouth as if she couldn't figure that it was hers.

He had stayed with her all through her trip to the hospital and trips to the dentist afterward, apologizing every day for weeks, until she got angry one day and told him to quit it.

Vorona's touched the scar again with a smile. "It has been described as a turn on," she declared.

And Shizuo felt his face redden and looked away, and though she didn't laugh, he felt her amusement ring bright into the air.

He took another sip of water; sunlight was beating over his face with no wind to balance out its heat. He was probably still red despite the shower, heat singing under his skin, his guts ready to spill over in his fury. He clenched his teeth and sat up straighter, one hand coming up to rub over his face. "Damn it."

"Likelihood of Yagiri Namie being allowed to expel an attending student is close to none," Vorona said quietly. "Likelihood of you undergoing disciplinary action—"

"I know," he cut in, looking at the bright blue sky above. "I fucked up."

A silence. "You did."

Unexpectedly, he felt her hand on his shoulder, the way Tom's had been the night before—and thinking of Tom made the embarrassment flare once more. He tensed but didn't dislodge her.

"She deserved it," Vorona said.

And thought he didn't made anything better—he laughed. The guilt enclosing him relaxed all at once, making air pour into his lungs where before there was nothing but smoke. Vorona's hand slid down from his shoulder and to his arm, and then to his own hand, linking their fingers together.

He squeezed it tightly.

* * *

"What happened to your face?" Orihara said as soon as Shizuo stepped into the hallway of his floor. "And your hand?"

Shizuo's right hand was wrapped up in bandages, properly this time. Vorona had helped pull out the splinters he couldn't get by himself and given him what he needed to clean it up. He used it to touch his left cheek where the outline of her glove was imprinted in blue and red. "Your pizza," was all he said, holding the box in front of him—but then he looked at Orihara's face and the unhappiness written tight into his features, and he relented. "It's nothing. Boxing gone wrong."

"Oh." Orihara took the pizza from him and handed him the money, weirdly proper; Shizuo took it without comment. He was about to turn on his heels and leave when Orihara asked, "Any reason why you're boxing again after almost a year?"

Shizuo blinked at the side of the door; then his jaw clenched despite itself, and he stepped forward, almost into Orihara's apartment, his lungs burning bright hot in his chest.

"Stop digging into my life like this," he growled.

Orihara looked amused again, which made him realize too late that maybe he was actually concerned before. "How else am I supposed to find these things out?"

"Just _ask_ me!" Shizuo resisted the urge to punch into the frame of the door—he braced himself on it instead, bring himself closer to Orihara, who didn't step back and simply looked up at his eyes. "Stop whatever you're doing with my coworker, it's creepy."

"I'm not doing anything," Orihara said. From this close Shizuo could almost feel his words against his face. "Who Manami-chan decides to confide in is her business."

Shizuo leaned back a little, and he knew the disgust he felt must show on his face. "Whatever you tell yourself to sleep better at night. I know you said something to Tom-san, too."

At this, Orihara's face paled. His lips thinned almost to nothingness. "Do you," was all he said.

"I don't know what," Shizuo added, a strange sort of anxious tension working its way inside him. "But he was acting weird, and he mentioned you."

For a moment, Orihara stayed silent. He looked at Shizuo without blinking, his pizza still held in one hand and the other hanging still by his side. He raised it slowly, until it was level with Shizuo's face—and Shizuo looked at it instantly with the right kind of expectation, still as a statue, breath caught in his chest.

Orihara smiled. His fingers brushed the bruise on Shizuo's cheek and then retreated, running through his own hair instead. He looked satisfied. "Well, believe what you want," he declared. Maybe you're right—I should stop talking with Manami so much. She might become a problem otherwise."

"Yeah," Shizuo mumbled. His face was hot again.

"However," and Orihara's voice was lower as he said it, "I haven't said anything to your other coworker— _Tom_ —that could possibly be held against me. However he acted after meeting me, it was all his doing." His smile widened. "Or maybe it was yours."

Shizuo's heartbeat spiked up. Orihara chuckled and turned away, but instead of closing the door without so much as a goodbye like he had every time before, he put the pizza box atop the cabinet in the entrance, and he faced Shizuo again.

He took his phone out of a pocket in his jacket and typed on it with one thumb quicker than Shizuo could ever manage. "I hope you've saved my number," he said, looking at his screen.

"Why?"

The smile on Orihara's face turned darker. Mirthless. When he looked up at Shizuo, his hand was clinging his phone tighter than necessary. "I was rather hoping that we could take this somewhere better than my apartment hallway," he said carefully. "Seeing as you've already invited yourself in."

Shizuo's hand dropped from the wall.

He didn't know whether he wanted to lean back or lean forward—and that was the first difference with Tom's offer twenty-four hours earlier, the fact that his first instinct wasn't to say _No_.

Orihara wasn't looking at him with a peaceful sort of surrender, the way Tom had. His was as though he had opened the gates to a castle under siege; his fingers were clenched so tight around his phone that his nails were entirely white, and when he swallowed, his entire neck trembled with it. Shizuo saw his skin turn feverish, saw the darkness in his eyes that was screaming inward instead of out.

His surrender looked as if he was waiting for someone to strike him.

The same feeling that had risen inside Shizuo the first time he saw him, drunk and miserable, rose again. But it was with the weight of all their meetings behind him and with the knowledge of Orihara's full-bodied attraction to him—the knowledge of Orihara's smile and of his sincerity, and of the feeling of his fingers against Shizuo's mouth, that had been shaking despite all appearances. It wasn't pity that made him think of Orihara for hours after seeing him; and it wasn't pity that led him back to this front door every night, with the half-baked hope that this time, Orihara would make a move.

No, Shizuo's first instinct wasn't to decline. Quite the contrary.

"All right," he breathed.

Orihara didn't move. The fright left his eyes, though, and the red his skin; and in the gleam of sweat on his forehead and the shaky turn of his smile, Shizuo read relief like he had never known before.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hundred-Dollar Rum  
** **Part III**

Kadota's New School Year Party finally had a scheduled date. Kadota himself waited for the end of Shizuo's classes on Thursday, still wearing his work overalls, blinking tiredly in the sunlight. The dust had left white spots on his face and hands, and every time he tried to wipe his mouth and chin free of it, he seemed to make it worse.

"Boss let me have the afternoon off," he said, waving Shizuo's smoke out of his way. Shizuo stepped a little farther away with an apologetic smile. "I'm going round telling everyone. Saturday evening."

"I'll take the evening off," Shizuo said. "I'm still pissed about the money thing, though."

Kadota grinned. "I promise you won't regret it."

He took off his beanie, shaking off some of the dust on it. Shizuo almost teased him about the existence of texts and the futility of going from person to person to relay the message by oneself, but he knew how Kadota was about those things. And he wasn't exactly in the mood.

He was supposed to meet with Orihara in town in about an hour.

"Karisawa's surprise better be worth it," he grumbled, and took another drag of his cigarette.

"It will, it will."

Kadota looked at him for a moment, taking in the clothes he was wearing. Shizuo felt himself blush before he opened his mouth.

"You're a little well-dressed for class, aren't you." It wasn't even a question.

Shizuo was wearing dress pants and his best shoes. Vorona had taken one look at the state of his clothes and taken the folded ironing table out of the dusty cupboard they'd put it in when they first moved. Shizuo hadn't even remembered that they had one. He had let her iron almost all his shirts with a half-hearted offer to do it himself.

Vorona had been doing a lot of things around the apartment since Monday. Cleaning and sorting and buying new equipment. Stuff she usually left until the last possible moment—once they became absolute necessity rather than daily annoyance. Shizuo had followed along with the cleaning only because he felt so guilty whenever he came home and noticed that she had taken care of his dishes for him.

As if reading his mind, Kadota asked, "How's she doing?"

"Good," he answered. This time he thought he wasn't being dishonest. "She has someone who's helping her more than anyone else could, I think."

"I heard you two went at it again yesterday," Kadota commented evenly.

Shizuo rolled his eyes. "Did Rokujou put the video online already?"

Kadota nodded, bashful, and Shizuo sighed. Some things were inevitable.

"Well," and Kadota sounded amused now, "if beating the shit out of you is her way of coping, then by all means."

"Sometimes _I_ want to beat the shit out of you, Kadota."

"Please don't. I like being alive."

The smile this put on his lips lasted until he caught sight of Yagiri walking quickly toward the entrance of the building they were leaning on.

Or at least she looked like she was. At the last possible moment her eyes came to rest on Shizuo, bypassing Kadota entirely, and she stopped in front of him. Shizuo straightened from his slouch against the wall, restraining a wince from the pain it caused him. He looked down at her in silence.

She was a tall woman, thin and well-dressed, and very attractive. She probably would've been a favorite among most of her male students from her looks alone if she weren't so fundamentally unsympathetic and unfair.

Maybe that was why she was.

"Heiwajima," she said lowly. She shot a glance to Kadota's dirty clothes, and her nostrils shivered in disdain.

Kadota cleared his throat. "I'll see you later," he told Shizuo. "Don't forget to tell Vorona about the date."

"I won't."

He left without further ado. Shizuo watched him go and tried to ignore the tense knots coming alive between his shoulder blades, where he was the sorest from his fight the day before.

Before he could muster the courage to speak, Yagiri said, "You'll be allowed back into my class."

He looked back at her in surprise. She was considerably calmer than she had been when they last saw each other and her face was the livid picture of some mythological monster, but there were bags under her eyes to betray her fatigue, and as always, she looked as if she hadn't smiled in years.

"Thank you," he said carefully. "Er—I apologize. For my rudeness. And for destroying a desk."

He bowed awkwardly, mindful of the pain in his neck and shoulders. For a long moment he didn't know when to straighten up, because Yagiri was silent and still.

"This isn't what I want," she said at last. He stood straight again, looking down into her eyes. There was anger on her face, and something a little tense—a little scared. "If it were up to me you'd be thrown out of this university, and I'd make sure you weren't accepted anywhere else in Tokyo for the rest of your sorry life."

It made his mouth dry despite the irritation flaring inside him. "I was out of line," he admitted through his teeth.

"If only just that," she sneered at him. "You're a talentless boy. Your work is mediocre. You don't have the heart for the job no matter how hard you try, and you of all people have no right to even sit in my classroom."

"You can't just decide that on your own—"

She waved a hand in front of his face, making him flinch back. "It doesn't matter. I don't have a choice." When she spoke again, she looked well and truly disgusted. "You and your _friend_ can dig up all the dirt you want on me or your other professors until you make your way out of this place with an unearned diploma. See if I fucking care."

She walked away, disappearing past the glass doors of the History building. Shizuo stared at the spot where she'd been standing wordlessly, fingers clutching the now-cold stub of his cigarette.

His blood felt like ice.

He made his way to the place he was supposed to meet with Orihara in a daze. He didn't look at the underground train station outside of campus anymore than he did the bus stop a street later and simply continued on foot, letting the warm May wind ruffle his face and brush against his skin. Any other day he would have revelled in the warmth of spring around him and the sights the city offered bathed in sunlight; but he barely felt the wind, and he barely felt the spikes of pain in his shoulders from fighting so recklessly against Vorona. He just walked.

Orihara was waiting for him at the café. He had picked the spot the night before, and he was already seated outside, dressed all in black, soft hair flickering around his face.

He looked different in the daylight. There was a childishness to him that Shizuo hadn't noticed in the red of the hallway—his eyes were brown instead of black when they met Shizuo's, and with this much light around the imprint of sleeplessness was less pronounced on him. He looked younger.

"Good afternoon," he greeted Shizuo. There was a softer smile on his lips than usual, or maybe it was just that it looked colder and meaner during the night. A witch's smile.

Shizuo sat at the table in front of him. Orihara put his chin onto the heel of his palm and observed him with blatant interest, eyes flickering over his clothes. "You look good," he said.

"Thank you," Shizuo replied evenly.

Orihara frowned. He waved a waitress over toward them, and once he was done placing his order Shizuo simply told the woman that he wanted the same thing mechanically. He didn't even know what Orihara had ordered.

He felt sluggish. As if his thoughts were going in slow-motion.

"I've seen the video," Orihara announced after a moment of tense silence. He slid his phone toward Shizuo, and Shizuo blinked at it tiredly. He saw himself and Vorona on the ring, moving against each other in a blur. "Through no fault of mine. It was actually an accident."

"I bet," Shizuo muttered.

He pushed the phone back to the other side of the table, and Orihara picked it back up, his mouth a tense line. "I didn't know you were this good at boxing."

"Vorona kicked my ass."

"But she didn't do so without some effort on her part, did she? And you hadn't fought in a year."

And Shizuo closed his eyes, letting acute disappointment pour into his voice, and he asked: "Did you blackmail my professor?"

Orihara's silence was as good as a confession. Shizuo rubbed his fingers over his eyes, slowly, painfully, so that when he opened them again all he saw for a moment were reddish spots, blurring Orihara's silhouette into nothingness.

It didn't last. Soon enough Orihara was there again, tense as a bow but not apologetic. "She deserved it," he said.

He sounded like a terribly distorted version of Vorona's words. Like an audio tape run down to grainy static from too much use.

Shizuo's fist closed around the café's menu card, and the thing crumpled in his grip immediately, though it was made of plastic rather than paper. His knuckles ached under the band-aids. "You had _no right_ to do that."

"Oh, come on," Orihara scoffed. He leaned backward into his chair, legs sprawling under the table and brushing Shizuo's gently. "She's a fraud. It took me all of thirty minutes to dig up enough dirt on her to get _her_ fired if I wanted to."

"Never mind it being illegal, then," Shizuo said, and he kicked Orihara's legs sideways, making the other slide down on his chair. "Since obviously you don't care about shit like that."

Orihara's eyes were glacial as he straightened up again. "I don't."

"Well, I do."

Shizuo stood up. His injured hand grabbed the handle of his backpack with too much strength, making the fabric rub hard against his palm.

"You can't just _do_ this, Orihara," Shizuo said. He knew he sounded pleading and pathetic, but he felt worse than that—he felt betrayed. "I told you to stop getting involved in my life like this."

"So protecting you from the bias of an unfair professor isn't fine, but this," Orihara gestured between the two of them, "is?"

Shizuo couldn't even look at him anymore. "Yeah. That's what I want. Not someone who manipulates my coworkers and blackmails people I get in disagreements with."

Orihara didn't speak for a moment. "She was going to ruin your chance at a career in your field of study," he said lowly. "I'd call that more than just _disagreeing_."

Shizuo brought his bag over his shoulder. "I would've dealt with that," he replied. "I would've called her out in front of the disciplinary board, and asked other students to help me too. She wouldn't have been able to do it."

He risked a look at Orihara's face again.

He was staring at the table in front of him, and his eyes alone betrayed nothing; but his fists were closed tight in his lap, and his legs were crossed at the knee, and he was as bruised with insomnia as he had ever been.

Shizuo felt sharp pity at his throat like the need to vomit. It drowned out the anger and left him feeling empty, left him feeling like a fool. "I'm sorry," he said, though he knew he had nothing to apologize for; Orihara clenched his jaw visibly before relaxing all at once.

His voice was very quiet when he spoke again. "I suppose we'll see each other tonight, then."

"No." It cost him to say it, but Shizuo did it anyway. "Don't bother ordering pizza today, or tomorrow either."

"How about Saturday?" Orihara asked pleadingly.

Shizuo thought he might not have meant to say it out loud. Orihara closed his mouth tightly after that, turning his head away from Shizuo and in the direction of the café's entrance, but Shizuo saw the blush crawling up his neck anyway.

He looked away too. "I'm busy on Saturday." He didn't want to stay here anymore and have to watch as Orihara struggled to keep his composure while refusing to apologize. "Drop it, Orihara."

"That's not my name."

Shizuo swallowed past the pain in his throat. "Drop it, Izaya," he repeated.

He heard Izaya chuckle behind him as he left, dry and mirthless.

* * *

When he got home at three in the morning, Vorona was sitting on his bed, legs dangling from the edge of the mezzanine.

She didn't ask him how his day went. She looked at him sideways, above the book she had balanced over the tiny wooden fence, face devoid of judgement of any kind. The living-room smelled like nail polish and flowers. Her toenails were blue now. Shizuo's dishes were gone from the sink and his desk had been dusted and cleaned, from the looks of it.

Shizuo dropped his bag on the coffee table and let himself fall onto the couch, staring unseeingly at their TV's screen. It wasn't on, but he didn't feel like extending his hand to grab the remote. He leaned his head back until the upper edge of the couch was at the crook of his neck, kneading some of the tension without getting rid of it.

He heard the creaking of the ladder as Vorona climbed down from his bed. Like she had a week ago, she sat down next to him on the couch—knees held close to her chest, toes digging into the fabric.

"Is it okay if I smoke inside?" Shizuo asked.

She nodded. He reached for the small table next to the couch, one with a potted plant on top of it and a small drawer. There was a similar one on the other side. Inside it he found the old ceramic ashtray he used whenever she wasn't around and dragged it to his lap.

He sighed, realizing that he'd have to reach for his bag for a new cigarette; but Vorona seemed to read his mind. Her feet touched the ground again and she leaned forward, taking hold of his backpack and rummaging through it quickly, habitually. She handed a new pack to him without a word and watched him open it with a quiet sort of expectation on her face.

Shizuo lit what must be his twenty-fifth smoke of the day with weak fingers. Pain was running through the line of his shoulders, worsened by riding on the moped for hours, making his mouth tense from simply lifting up his arms.

"Warm-up and stretching next time," Vorona murmured. "And appropriate attire."

"Yeah." Shizuo took a long drag of smoke, let it burn his throat without coughing and expand in his lungs lazily. "I don't think there'll be a next time."

Vorona observed him silently for a moment. She stretched her naked legs in front of her, grabbing the edge of the coffee table with her toes, and she said: "You don't miss it at all."

Shizuo thought about it. About the sweat and the effort and the rush of adrenaline when he fought, the relaxation spreading through him afterward when he showered, almost sexual in nature; he thought about the sound of sandbags cracking open under his bound fists and similar crack that rang inside him every time, leaving him high off his own strength.

He thought about Vorona's busted lips and the busted lips of many others—about the fear-tinged respect in the club members' eyes.

"No," he replied, blinking the burn out of his eyes furiously. His throat ached with the unexplained need to cry.

"Okay," Vorona said.

It was that simple. Or that complicated.

Vorona turned her back to him, and Shizuo thought that she was about to stand up and leave for her room. But all she did was lean against his side, the back of her head on his shoulder and her legs spread over the arm of the couch on her side—almost knocking the plant there that mirrored the one on Shizuo's.

Shizuo didn't move. His shoulder relaxed without any effort on his behalf, to make for a better headrest for Vorona. He looked at the top of her head and resisted the urge to sneeze when her hair tickled his nose gently. "You okay?" he asked.

"Affirmative," was all she said.

"Are you sure—"

She dug her elbow into his stomach lightly. " _Yes_."

He pushed her arm away and frowned at her, even though she couldn't see it. "Vorona," he said, as evenly as he could make himself sound. "I don't mean to, to push you or anything. But I'm worried." He paused, then added: "Everyone is."

Vorona stayed silent. He saw her unlock the screen of her phone, but she didn't do anything with it. She simply stared at the blue background and unopened apps.

Then, she said: "Everyone?"

"Yeah. " Shizuo shifted in his seat, relieving some of the pain in his back and making her head slide from his shoulder to his arm. "Kadota's group, Celty… Even my coworkers."

"You mean Tanaka," she scoffed.

"Kaztano too. Kadota told him about your dad."

She lifted her phone, camera turned to them. The picture she snapped only showed her eyes and forehead and, above them, Shizuo's surprised face, his cigarette halfway to his mouth. He didn't have time to say anything before she sent it away to half her contact list.

"Damn you," he growled, shaking her off his shoulder. He crushed the cig in the ashtray.

There was a very small smile on her lips when she turned her body around to look at him once more. "Shame is unneeded. You have a very photogenic face."

"That's not the issue!"

But he couldn't be mad. Not with the heavy fatigue coursing through his limbs and with the heavier affection he had for her, and certainly not when he could see the marks that lack of sleep had left under her eyes and in the color of her skin. Her lips were very white.

Shizuo put a hand on her knee. She didn't react to it except for losing some humor in her expression—and it was open, still, so he repeated, "Are you all right?"

She looked down. "Unknown," she replied.

"Okay." He took back his hand, rubbed it over his face. "You know you can talk to me if you need to, right?"

"Unclear whether _you_ know that you can talk to me," Vorona replied dryly.

His heart skipped a beat. "What do you mean?"

She made a _tsk_ sound between her teeth, looking irritated, but not at him. "Change in your behavior has been noticed in the past two weeks," she said. "Possibility of it being due to the loss of my father has been examined and rejected."

"Oh God," Shizuo said, chest drumming with horror, "did you think you were responsible—"

" _Listen_ ," Vorona interjected. He shut his mouth, his entire body cold with fear more than embarrassment. Vorona scratched at the shaved side of her head, blue nails digging into the soft, tiny hair there, and she looked as if she were ready to start hitting something in frustration. "The possibility has been rejected," she said again, slower this time. "If… you would like to talk about it. The real issue. I am amenable."

Her cheeks were red. Her eyes didn't show any hesitation, however, and neither did the rest of her. He half-expected the low light of the room to reflect on her like it would on steel, because that was how she felt to him. As unbreakable and heavy as reality itself.

"I…" He hesitated. "Someone's been… coming on to me lately." He saw her eyes turn to ice, so he waved a hand between them. "It wasn't _unwanted_. Fuck, between you and Tom, it's like you both think I can't fucking defend myself."

"Not a question of physical strength," she replied.

He sighed. "I know. Damn it, I _know_. This guy is… he's intense. He's not a very good guy, and he's very—open, about what he wants. But not in a bad way. He never acted like an asshole about this, he was just clear about the fact that he was interested in me."

"Is the interest reciprocated?"

Izaya's face appeared to him, not as it had earlier, burned with shame and hurt, but as it had all the times before. Shadowed and suspicious but also open in ways Shizuo didn't think Izaya himself realized. Every single encounter he'd had in that hallway had felt like the air itself was charged with electricity; when Izaya touched him, it made his skin run with shivers and warmth, his face and lips sting and tingle.

It only made the memories of the day worse.

"Yeah," Shizuo said at last. "It is. I just don't think he's gonna want to be with me anymore."

The disappointment was so bitter on his tongue, he had to turn his head away and swallow. Vorona didn't ask any more questions, and she didn't move to touch him.

She stayed, though.

* * *

Friday morning greeted them all with rain. Despite how clear the sky had been for weeks, the fog was thick and the clouds heavy, and some time around seven in the morning, they opened up over the city and wept.

Shizuo got out of his home at the same time as Vorona did. Her economics lecture took place near where Yagiri's office was, so they made their way to campus together on foot. Despite the umbrellas they took with them, they were drenched in minutes, Shizuo's jeans sticking to his legs icily and Vorona's pants looking no better. She wiped her wet hands on her shirt with a moue of disgust once they got inside her building, before dragging her arms out of her jacket and holding it between her fingers dramatically. It had been green when they left home; now it was almost black.

"I hate rain," Shizuo muttered. His hands were cold but he felt too hot under his clothes. "Fuck."

"No swearing in front of Yagiri Namie," Vorona commented.

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

The pain in his back was worse today than it had been the day before. Shizuo had forgotten how to deal with sore muscles, and he wished he could remember how he had gone along with spars every day for years before he quit. Vorona gave him the hint of a smirk before walking toward the hall at her right where other students were already gathered.

Soon, Shizuo was alone, his wet bag pressed against his chest, and the hours to Yagiri's office visits crammed into his pocket, probably reduced to unreadable mud.

He walked toward the stairs anyway, and he took them two at a time until he reached the third floor. There wasn't anyone around that he could see except for a busy-looking secretary at a desk along the corner, and when he asked her if Yagiri was in, all she did was nod and point to the farthest door in the hallway.

Shizuo walked up to it, stomach tense and heart beating in his mouth, and knocked.

"Enter," came Yagiri's voice.

He pushed open the door.

Her office was as devoid of life as she herself looked. It was neat but dusty, with the faint smell of tobacco in it; the shutters were almost completely closed over the windows, reducing natural light enough that she probably had the electric ceiling lamp on all the time. There was a succulent on the windowsill that Shizuo thought must be fake, and a single picture on top of her desk.

She was in it, looking a lot younger. A boy who looked like her stood on the other side of the frame, and, between them both, a big man with a menacing face, holding both their shoulders with his hands.

"Sorry to bother you," Shizuo said, dragging his eyes up from the picture and to Yagiri herself, seated at the desk. As he expected, she looked displeased to see him. "I wanted to talk about what you said yesterday."

"There's nothing more to say," she barked at him. "If that's all, you can get out of my office—"

"Wait." He raised his hands, palms facing forward in surrender. "I'm not here to make things worse."

She snorted. "How much worse _could_ they get?" She had papers sprawled over the desk, and her fingers were stained with ink from writing. He thought he could see a lawyer's card near her pen, and it made the guilt in him tighten like a vice.

"The person who blackmailed you," he said lowly. "I'm so sorry. I never asked them to do it, if it's any reassurance."

"You're lying."

He swallowed mechanically. "I know I sound like I'm making excuses for myself," he continued. "But I talked to them about it, and they won't do anything. I swear."

He wasn't lying. He didn't think Izaya would do anything to make the situation harder on himself, not with the way he had looked back then.

She frowned at him in suspicion. "Why should I believe you?"

He didn't know how to answer that.

"Thought so," she muttered.

She looked down at her work after that, apparently deciding to ignore him. Her hair wasn't the same sleek black as it always looked; it looked tangled, and the collar of her shirt was crumpled, as if she'd slept in it overnight. Despite the sure way she reached for her fountain pen, her fingers were trembling with rage or exhaustion, and Shizuo knew that he couldn't leave it at a simple apology.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Her fist closed on the table, crumpling a student's paper on the way. "You've made your point. Leave."

He shook his head, though he knew she couldn't see it. "No. I'm sorry that I was disrespectful—I shouldn't have said what I did, or been violent in your classroom."

"Are you sorry that you did it," she seethed, "or for the consequences you almost faced?"

"Both," he replied instantly. "And you're totally free to take disciplinary action against me for my attitude. Regardless of my opinion of your teaching methods, I shouldn't have done that." He could feel the beat of his heart against his chest, rapid-fire, like a bird's. He breathed in deeply despite the anger trying to roar its way out and pushed down on it with all the strength of his mind—all the strength he could muster from the memory of Vorona's presence beside him the day previous. When he closed his hand by his side, he thought he could still feel her fingers, entwined with his.

Yagiri stayed still for a moment. Then she dropped her pen on the desk, ignoring the droplets of ink that fell on it from the shock, and she leaned back in her chair so she could look up at him.

She looked both more vulnerable like this, away from the height the professor's chair gave her in the lecture hall, and more terrifying.

Shizuo bowed as he had the day before. "I apologize," he repeated at the floor. "For my actions, and for their consequences to you. I never wanted anyone to get blackmailed over my temper."

There was a knock on the door. The secretary from earlier walked in, marking a second of hesitation at the sight Shizuo made, but Shizuo didn't move. She spoke to Yagiri in a low voice behind her desk and then left, and Shizuo didn't straighten up until the door had closed behind her and the muscles in his back were almost screaming from the pain.

He licked his lips, tasting rainwater and salt on them. Yagiri had her eyes fixed to the papers the woman had brought in, but they were unmoving.

"What do you know of this person's threats against me?" she finally asked. Her voice was quieter than he had ever heard it.

"Nothing," he replied. "I didn't ask, and they didn't tell me."

She crossed her legs at the knee. "I would've thought any student would jump at the occasion to get dirt on a teacher."

"Not me. I hate underhanded shit like this."

It made her smile, though not from any sort of positive feeling. "Let's say I believe you, then." Shizuo opened his mouth, but she tapped two fingers on her desk firmly, cutting him off. "How sure can I be that my life won't be spread around for the public to see?"

"I can't… offer you any proof," Shizuo replied. The realization made him feel more defeated than rejecting Izaya had. "But I know this person. I'll talk to them again if I have to—make them apologize to you as well."

Yagiri didn't look at him. She rubbed the flaking nail polish of her left hand with her thumb, though it was still shaky; in the end she closed her fist and sighed, loud despite the sound of heavy rain filtering in from the window. She looked sickly in that sort of light. Sleepless and wrung dry.

"Fine," she said tightly. "You do that, then."

Shizuo was about to reply, but she stood up, stopping him once again.

"Get me a formal apology and a name," she declared, looking him in the eyes. "If I don't have it by Monday evening I'll drag you in front of the disciplinary board, Heiwajima. And I'll call my lawyer and sue whichever friend of yours thought this was a game, and you with them."

"Deal," Shizuo breathed.

She sat back down, opening a drawing and taking a pack of Camels out of it. "Get out of my office."

Shizuo turned on his heels and walked back. His hand was on the handle of her door when another thought occurred to him.

"You know," he said, looking at her over his shoulder. "I actually love your class."

Yagiri had a cigarette stuck between her lips. It fell down as she laughed, an angry, wrecked sort of laugh, unattractive and high-pitched and making her entire body shudder as if she were being hurt. It lasted too long for comfort and made the air of the room feel like ice.

Her eyes were shining with tears when it stopped. She turned around in her chair so he wouldn't see her wipe them off, and Shizuo took the opportunity to leave, closing the door as silently as he could behind himself.

He found Sharaku outside. She was standing in the shadow of the entrance, protected from the rain, looking at him walk to her and chewing gum around her smile. Like she had on Monday, she handed him her pack, and he refused, lighting a cigarette instead.

"You're gonna kill yourself with those," she commented.

"Shut up," he grumbled. It was hard to be honestly angry after seeing Yagiri lose it like this, so he smiled at her best as he could. "How I decide to die is none of your business."

"Why are students always so fucking dramatic?"

He laughed briefly. "What are you doing here? Vorona won't be out for a while yet."

Sharaku's face brightened at the mention of Vorona's name. She slid the pack of gum back into her pocket and replied, "Guess I just felt like seeing how you were doing, Heiwajima."

It made him pause, and the smoke come out of his lips slow and languid. The air was too heavy and wet with rain for it to rise; it stagnated over their heads, stuck inside the small pocket of water-free space where they stood.

"Vorona wanted me to make sure you didn't get your head chewed off in there," Sharaku admitted with a lopsided smile. "Just in case."

"Right."

"Right." She took her phone out. "I should tell her that your head is intact."

"You do that," he said mockingly.

She gave him the finger, casually, while typing with one hand. Shizuo closed his eyes and let the sizzling sounds around lull him into something more relaxed than he really felt. The ache in his back and shoulders lessened and the fog in his head grew, weighing down on his temples, reminding him of all the hours of sleep he had lost lately.

"You look exhausted," Sharaku said gently.

He blinked at her tiredly. "Yeah." He pushed himself off the wall and onto his feet proper. The world rocked sideways for a terrible second before his mind settled on working again. "I've got a gigantic nap planned for today."

"Live your ambitions," she smirked.

His phone vibrated against his thigh. He stuck his cigarette between his teeth and took it out of his jeans' pocket, the band-aids on his knuckles almost ripping off on the edge of it. He didn't mark a pause at the name he saw on the screen despite the way his chest constricted and simply turned his back to Sharaku, pressing it against his ear. The case was damp between his fingers from contact with his drenched clothes.

"I was about to call you," he said in preamble.

There was a moment of quiet on the other end. _"Oh."_

 _Oh, indeed_ , he thought with nostalgia. It didn't matter that the time nostalgia took him back to was less than two weeks ago. "I just had a talk with Yagiri," Shizuo said, tapping the end of his cigarette; the ash fell toward the ground without a sound, half of it getting caught on his leg. "She's saying she'll sue us both if she doesn't get a formal apology from you—signed in your name—by Monday."

Izaya was so silent and still on the end of the line that Shizuo could have believed that he hung up, if not for the tiny, staticky sounds he could hear through the rain.

 _"She wouldn't be able to do anything against me,"_ he said. _"But I suppose giving you a blackmailing record would beat my initial purpose."_

"I suppose," Shizuo murmured. "Why were you calling me?"

Izaya's voice sounded so different on the phone, so disagreeable. So far-fetched from the sweetness of it when they were face-to-face. _"It doesn't matter,"_ Izaya said evenly. _"Fine, then. I'll write Yagiri-san the most obsequious letter that she's ever received."_

But he didn't hang up after that, though his tone was final. Shizuo stared at the wall and ignored the burning weight of Sharaku's eyes at his nape; he took another breath of smoke, his fingers brushing his lips, warmer and bigger than Izaya's had been.

Izaya spoke again, then. _"I would still like to see you."_ He tone and words had switched to an aching sort of politeness, so different from his arrogance that Shizuo knew without a doubt that they were sincere. It made the pit of longing in his stomach growl in anguish like a living creature. _"I have time tomorrow evening. If you want."_

"I'm not doing the café thing again," Shizuo said, though he shouldn't.

Izaya chuckled breezily. Shizuo heard the sound of a chair being moved and a laptop booting up, and he put his arm on the wall in front of his and his head against it. His neck hurt. _"I'm sure we can figure something out for dinner. Maybe simply your place or mine, though I'm a mediocre cook."_

"Figures, with all the pizza," Shizuo mumbled. Then, straightening up: "So you're inviting me out, but _I_ have to make you food?"

 _"Trust me,"_ Izaya replied delightedly, _"you don't want to try any of mine."_

Shizuo let himself imagine it for a second—inviting Izaya over or walking to his house and cooking there. No one around to see him and his own want, no wise voice to tell him he should look elsewhere, look for better. Just Izaya in his empty apartment, his eyes black and his heart on his tongue, fingers reaching up to touch Shizuo's face.

His cheeks were red when he spoke again; and the words, when they came, did so with a whole new sort of pain. "Sorry—shit. I can't."

Izaya took a while to respond. _"All right, then."_ He sounded wounded, and Shizuo's guts clenched in remorse.

"Izaya—"

 _"See you, pizza boy,"_ Izaya said.

He cut the call.

Shizuo let his arm fall to his side. The cigarette in his other hand wasn't burning anymore, though he had forgotten to finish it. The humidity was so bad that the ember had died on its own.

He almost jumped when he turned around and saw Sharaku still standing there and looking at him.

"Shit," he said again, rubbing a hand over his face. "I forgot you were there."

"I could tell," she replied. "Trouble in paradise?"

"There wasn't a paradise to begin with." She made a face at that, too understanding for comfort, so Shizuo lifted his bag over his shoulder and said, "I should go home," in a definitive tone.

She nodded, and she pushed herself away from her own wall, stretching her arms above her head. "I should head back to the dojo too," she said with a deep exhale, tension running out of her. "I've got a class to teach to the little ones."

"Good luck." Shizuo opened his umbrella, which was still wet from his walk earlier. "See you tomorrow, Sharaku."

"Send me a pic of Vorona trying on her party wear, will ya?" she replied.

"Get some yourself," he snapped back.

For the second time that day, he went away with laughter at his back. He didn't feel like laughing himself, though, and the fifteen minutes he took to reach his apartment were spent in stark silence, his stomach heavy with guilt, and his clothes heavy with damp.

* * *

The sky was still dark on Saturday. Every sidewalk was a puddle, making walking near-impossible without feeling icy water fill one's shoes. Even so, at five in the afternoon when Vorona emptied her closet in the living-room, the row of footwear she aligned in the entrance for trying didn't count a single pair of closed flats or sturdy boots.

"Are you gonna be okay wearing those?" Shizuo asked her, nodding to the brand-new pair of red pumps she had placed on the coffee table.

She stared at him in the mirror she had placed on his desk. She was using it as her spot to apply makeup; her hair was up in a towel, and she was in her underwear.

The underwear thing had stopped shocking him the first time it happened, on the very day they had started living together.

"They have good balance," she replied evenly.

"The heel is one centimeter in diameter."

She didn't reply.

Shizuo stared at the TV again. He had notes for his upcoming assignment spread over his lap and over the couch, as well as about five different books that he hadn't opened yet. There was a telemarketing program on, which didn't interest him in the least, but Vorona had taken the remote with her and not brought it back.

"We don't even have to be there for two more hours," he muttered.

Those hours were spent browsing any online article that he found relevant to his work, no matter how far-fetched. There was something about physically opening books to work that made the prospect of staying hunched over working on an essay for hours _real_ as opposed to _planned_. He knew he wouldn't get anything accomplished before leaving for the party anyway.

Vorona came and went during that time, each time with different clothes on. Shizuo lost track of her outfits after the first two, and she never asked for his opinion anyway, only for his compliance in letting her use the entire apartment as she saw fit. Considering all the housework she'd done over the week, he wasn't too resentful about it.

Because the clouds were so low over the city, the light started to dim by the time they had to leave. Vorona emerged from the bathroom one last time one hour after they were supposed to go, wearing the brightest red shorts he had ever seen and the shoes he had commented on earlier, as well as a cream silk shirt. She had earrings on and gel in her hair, and when she walked on those needle-like heels, she didn't waver even once.

Sharaku made a noise of appreciation when they joined her outside of their building. She was wearing different dress pants than the ones she had on at the funeral on Monday, and better-looking shoes; and, to Shizuo's surprise, Vorona hooked their arms together as they walked.

Judging by the color on Sharaku's cheeks, it was a surprise to her too.

They took the train to Kadota's place. Thanks to the thin, maze-like streets around him, the water on the ground was less present, making the walk more comfortable. They heard the murmur of voices and music before they even knocked, and when Yumasaki opened the door, the volume hit them in full, making Shizuo flinch back by reflex.

He ushered them inside with a bright smile and a dramatic _Welcome_ ; when the door closed behind them, confining them to the noise and crowd inside, Shizuo felt it physically.

"Come on, Shizu-chan," Yumasaki said, pushing him with both hands at his shoulders.

"Don't fucking call me—"

"Shizu-chan!" Karisawa's voice rang, clear and insufferable, and the woman herself appeared in front of him as if summoned by the sound of his name. "You're _here_!"

"I said I would be," he replied angrily.

Her face was red with delight, and she said, "You have to see what we bought. Come on, come on!"

She tugged him further inside, toward the wide living-room—thrice wider than Shizuo's whole apartment—and to the center of it, where a group was gathered around something that made a weird sort of buzzing echo through the music.

At first he couldn't see what it was. The dozen girls staring at the device in awe made too compact a screen, and it wasn't until one of them moved away that light finally fell on the machine pouring dark liquid from all sides and steaming very faintly.

"Is that a _chocolate fountain_?" he asked.

Karisawa roared in laughter next to him.

"It's so big," he said, bewildered. There were pieces of fruit and candy on the table where it was placed, making it look like a pedestal of some sort, surrounded by offerings. "Fucking hell."

"It's why we wanted all that money," Karisawa mock-whispered. "Everyone in this room has participated in buying our best acquisition since we moved into this place."

"Togusa-san wanted to turn it into a beer fountain," Yumasaki said, appearing on Shizuo's other side. "A _beer fountain_."

"Can you even do that with a chocolate fountain? Or anything? Wouldn't the foam be impossible to control?"

"I rue the day we shall find out, Karisawa-san!"

Shizuo slipped away from them as they yelled. All the furniture in the room was occupied by someone, and the ordinarily clean bar counter on the side was filled to the brim with bottles, opened or not. The blue light on the ceiling served no actual lighting purpose, but it shone grimly on its surface, which in places already looked sticky with spilled liquid.

Shizuo walked behind the bar and to Kadota's large secondhand fridge. As he thought, the beer and white wine were stacked inside. He grabbed a bottle of white without thinking too much and got himself a paper cup from the giant pile of them beside the sink.

Someone tapped his shoulder while he was pouring the Moscato, almost making him drop the bottle. Celty was smiling at him as he turned his head, her phone held up between her hands, reading, _Having fun?_

"I'm absolutely thrilled to be here," he replied dryly. He put the bottle back in the fridge after he was done, and he downed half of the fruity wine in one go. He felt warmth rush to his head as he did. "Where's Shinra?"

 _With the weird childhood friend he invited. The guy doesn't seem exceptionally happy to be here either._

"I don't know how anyone could be Shinra's childhood friend and be happy with the fact."

She pinched him lightly in answer, making the first real smile emerge on his lips in more than two days.

Celty knew the place better than he did. She dragged him to the farthest end of the room, in a sort of alcove where a ratty couch sat. Shizuo had seen it whenever he came around but never used it himself—the TV was on the other side of the living room, which was where they played video games. This one was lumpy and uncomfortable, but it was away from most of the noise and guests.

 _I'm glad to see Vorona_ , Celty wrote once they were seated. _Was that her girlfriend with her?_

"Yeah," Shizuo replied.

Celty didn't show any surprise at the admission. She took it in stride without further comment and with a smile, and when she engaged him again, it was in work and school-related chitchats, and about the latest news on her side.

Kadota walked to them about twenty minutes later. "I saw you get a head start on the Moscato," he told Shizuo, throwing him the bottle in question. Shizuo caught it with the tips of his fingers. "Sorry I couldn't come by earlier, the place is literally swarming with people I need to say hi to."

"Won't anyone miss this?"

"It's fine," Kadota said lightly. "I bought it for you and Erika anyway, but she's too busy with the fountain to care about the booze."

Celty typed for a moment before turning her phone to him. _Why did you buy the fountain?_ it read.

"It costs a fortune in chocolate to even work, but it's amazing." Kadota was grinning now, hair messy from the heat, cheeks red from drinking. "Let's just call it a childhood dream come true."

A sudden burst of cheers from the room made him look behind. Shizuo had to struggle to see what the source of it was, and when he found it, his face warmed with more than the simple effects of the wine.

Vorona was kissing Sharaku next to the fountain, both hands caught in Sharaku's hair and Sharaku's hovering over her sides in surprise and appreciation. It didn't last more than five seconds. In that time the room had burst into applause, though for entirely wrong reasons; and Shizuo felt pride shoot through him like an arrow when he saw the way Sharaku smiled and laughed, and the way Vorona turned around, contentment shining out of her.

Kadota was red as well when he looked back at them. "Um," he said. "Guess that explains why you two aren't together."

"Guess it does," Shizuo said into his wine.

"Togusa's gonna be heartbroken about this."

Shizuo almost replied, _Who gives a shit about Togusa_.

"Right." Kadota straightened from his slouch and spoke to Celty next. "Shinra's looking for you, by the way."

She shrugged lightly and stood up, following him into the room. They disappeared inside the crowd.

Shizuo sat alone in the alcove. He refilled his glass with the now-lukewarm wine but didn't touch any of it. He stared at the edge of the wall without seeing the people around, and wondered how long he would have to stay until he could leave without seeming rude. Despite the space around everything was the wrong kind of warm, stuffy, sweet from the alcohol and bitter from the sweat. There was a group dancing next to the TV, where Togusa had probably set the music the loudest. He thought he caught sight of Kamichika in it, but she was moving too fast for him to know with this little light.

There was a noise as someone put a glass bottle on the old wooden coffee table in front of him. The couch dipped beside him when they sat down, and Shizuo looked at the bottle absently, waiting for conversation to arise from the stranger and their probable friends so that he could drown them out again.

It was a heavy bottle, already almost empty. Probably rum. In the blue light its content looked like liquid gold, and it splashed around lazily from being moved, leaving amber droplets to hang to the inside of the crystal. One long-fingered hand was holding the cork in place and leaving small, whitish stains on its gleaming surface.

Warmth spread through Shizuo's chest, tingles running down his arms and to the tips of his fingers—and next to him Izaya said, "Good evening, pizza boy."

He felt suffocated. His eyes met Izaya's as if drawn in by a magnet; Izaya looked winded, his skin shining from sweat or from the light alone, entirely out of his composure, and more attractive than Shizuo had ever seen him.

It didn't seem to matter than he couldn't find any word to answer. Izaya let go of the hundred-dollar rum and put his hand to Shizuo's cheek instead, thumb brushing the corner of his lips and fingers digging into his hair.

"You're Shinra's childhood friend," Shizuo said at last.

Izaya smiled shakily at him. "If it were anyone but Shinra I'd ask you why you sound so horrified."

His palm was so warm. Shizuo knew his face must be redder and hotter than it had a minute ago upon seeing Vorona and Sharaku, and Izaya's wasn't much better, though in his case it was masked by the way blue looked on him. Shizuo held no hope that he looked this good while blushing so furiously.

"I wasn't stalking you," Izaya said abruptly. He took back his hand, and Shizuo tried not to flinch at the loss of it and the sudden free-fall of his heart. "I didn't know you'd be here."

"I—"

Shizuo closed his mouth. Izaya's hands were trembling slightly, though he didn't look drunk. If anything he seemed terrified by his own forwardness in a way he hadn't when they were alone in his hallway and his gaze had lingered, unabashed, on every detail of Shizuo he could find. As if he wanted to burn him to memory.

"I believe you," Shizuo said.

Izaya exhaled all the tension in his body at once. He rubbed a hand over his face, and Shizuo watched, fascinated, drinking in every second of it.

He swallowed. "I've—"

"Shizuo," Izaya cut in, and Shizuo shut his mouth again, teeth hitting too hard together and making his jaw ache. "I need to talk to you."

He was biting his lips. Wordlessly, he brought himself closer, until their thighs were almost touching and he had to turn his upper body around to be able to face Shizuo. From this close, it was easy to discern how damp his lips were, and his eyelashes cast long shadows over his cheeks, drawing lines over his skin that the light cut through like blue scars.

"Okay," Shizuo breathed.

Izaya smiled joylessly. His hands were clenched tightly in his lap. "I'm—sorry."

Shizuo's throat felt tight.

"I," and Izaya raised a hand to put it on his shoulder, fingers digging tightly into the fabric of Shizuo's shirt, "I thought I wouldn't apologize. Shouldn't apologize. Part of me keeps telling me that I never care about this, but the truth is—"

He stopped to breathe in. Shizuo raised his own hand without thinking, circling Izaya's wrist against his chest with his fingers. He felt the other's heartbeat in it, and it was as fast as his own.

"I don't care that some fraud of a professor feels bad that I broke into her private life," Izaya continued. He hadn't stopped looking into Shizuo's eyes, hadn't even blinked once. "In general I'm not someone who gives much thought to others, or who feels a lot of empathy. And more than just that—I don't care about a lot besides myself."

Shizuo tried to reign in the hope flowering in him to no avail; it spread through his blood like sunlight, so bright it made him want to close his eyes. Izaya took in another breath before continuing, "I've found that I care that _you_ care, though."

Shizuo wanted to raise his other hand and touch his fingers to the skin at Izaya's nape, where it must be damp, where the softest of his hair would brush his knuckles.

He couldn't hear any of the party's noises anymore.

"The day you met me," Izaya murmured, "was one miserable day in a long string of miserable days. I bought the most expensive bottle of alcohol I could find on impulse and I was planning on drinking until either my body or the bottle gave out. I don't even remember ordering pizza at all." Shizuo's hand slid up from Izaya's wrist to hold his fingers instead, and they were shaking again in his grip, cold where his palm had been hot. "I never expected anyone to show me any sort of kindness. Let alone a perfect stranger."

"I wasn't going to leave you like this," Shizuo replied softly.

Izaya shook his head with a chuckle. "A lot of people would have. And I felt so outraged afterward, that someone had stepped so thoroughly into my perfect plan to ruin myself. I spent the day reading your message and then trying to crumple the paper as tightly as I could, over and over and over, and thinking of ways to make you pay for it."

"You _asshole_ —"

"The thing is," Izaya cut in. "You answered when I called. And you came when I told you to bring back that stupid bottle. And you came back every night afterward, and it didn't even take forty-eight hours for me to realize that was the only time of the day I was looking forward to. Stupid, right?" He laughed as he said it, and Shizuo's mouth tasted bitter despite the sweet of the wine, every beat of his heart ringing through his entire body. "I didn't even _know_ you. Even with all the details I pried out of your coworker every day, I don't really know you. But you were there on my doorstep every night, like a fucking daydream come alive, and I wanted you so much _._ "

Shizuo's free hand reached forward and gripped Izaya's nape, touching soft hair and softer skin. "Do you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice?" he asked. "Because I'm exhausted."

Izaya was already close enough that he could make out every individual eyelash, every strand of his hair. When he tugged him closer he saw the limits of his pupils inside his eyes, almost completely drowning out his irises, and Izaya laughed a real, genuine laugh, that crashed onto Shizuo's lips along with his own.

Both of Izaya's hands framed his face almost instantly, scratching his scalp lightly and tangling with his hair; Shizuo leaned into the kiss harder than he thought he would, making Izaya fall backward on the lumpy couch and their mouth lose contact for a second. Izaya immediately pulled him back in, and when Shizuo felt his mouth open under his own, he didn't hesitate.

Izaya tasted sweet from the rum. He licked into Shizuo's mouth almost avidly, and Shizuo let him, content to brush the hair out of his forehead and feel him breathe against his cheek, eyes fluttering closed where he could feel it, right under his own. Everywhere they touched was scorching, and he felt his back dampen with sweat, his fingers slide against Izaya's skin, his lips sting from the heat.

When he pulled back, it was only so he could breathe and look. Izaya's face was entirely red, his mouth still open, but his eyes were focused when they opened.

He licked his lips. "You know," he told Shizuo, "I don't even like rum. Too sweet."

Shizuo sat up with an exasperated grunt. "We're not compatible in any way."

He glanced at Izaya sideways, just in case, but Izaya didn't seem to take his comment to heart. He threw a hand over the back of the couch to pull himself up as well and back into Shizuo's space. He rested his chin on Shizuo's shoulder, and his hair tickled Shizuo's nose gently. Shizuo only barely managed to restrain himself from leaning down to kiss it. With pulling back from Izaya came the awareness that they weren't alone at all, that a world of people was moving around them, too close for comfort. Shizuo looked around the room, panic rising up his throat at the thought of being _applauded_ the way Vorona had earlier.

It seemed no one had seen them, thankfully. He leaned his head back against the couch and closed his eyes.

He felt Izaya shift against him. "I'm aware that dating the weird client who keeps checking you out and digging into your life isn't the best prospect out there," Izaya said in a quiet voice.

"Yeah," Shizuo replied in kind. "So I've been told."

There was a silence. Shizuo thought about dragging a cigarette out of his pocket, but he still had the taste of Izaya's mouth on his tongue, sweeter and warmer than any alcohol, almost unbearably pleasant.

"I don't know about any of that stuff," he admitted. "I've been told I'm lowering my standards too much. Or that I'm making bad decisions."

Izaya tensed beside him, body going from relaxed to hard and unforgiving. Shizuo pulled his back away from the couch, and Izaya's head slid from his shoulder. They looked at each other for a moment.

Shizuo's chest was still brimming with warmth. His heart was still beating against his ribs as if trying to break them from the inside.

"It's good enough, though, right?" he asked. "That you want me, and I want you too."

Izaya smiled darkly. "What I want is a little more complicated, Shizuo."

"That's fine too, then." Shizuo took out a cigarette and lit it, and Izaya's gaze felt like a trail of heat on his lips, worse than the flame of his lighter. He let out the smoke with his next words: "I'm the kind of guy who falls in love with the shitty client digging into his life, after all."

He watched the flush on Izaya's face darken again, the deep terror in his eyes bleed out; and he didn't move to stop him when Izaya plucked the cigarette from his lips to replace it with his own. He breathed the smoke out into Izaya's mouth, heat running under his skin and then over it as Izaya breathed it back.

All of his self brought to a simmer by how much he wanted this.


End file.
